Daily Software Tips & Tricks
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Speed Up Refactoring with Multi-Cursor Editing
March 21, 2026
If you are manually renaming five variables that do not quite warrant a full "Rename Symbol" refactor, VS Code’s multi-cursor support is your best friend. You can hit Cmd+D (or Ctrl+D) to select the next occurrence of a highlighted word, or Alt+Click to place cursors anywhere you want.
It feels like a superpower when you are editing repetitive HTML tags or formatting a long list of constants. Just be careful not to overshoot and edit something off-screen; always give your file a quick scroll to ensure you haven't accidentally modified a different section of the codebase.