Every time you install a VS Code extension, something quiet happens in the background: new keyboard shortcuts show up. Nobody tells you. Nobody asks if you want them. They just appear, silently overriding what was there before.
One day you press Ctrl+Shift+P and something unexpected runs. Or Cmd+D stops doing what it used to. You check your keybindings and find a mess – ten extensions fighting over the same keys, and you never chose any of them.
Why should an extension decide what my keyboard does?
🎹 The invisible problem
Keyboard shortcuts are muscle memory. They’re personal. You build them over months and years of work, and they become part of how you think while coding.
But VS Code treats extension shortcuts as equals to your own. They land in the same space, with the same priority, and they accumulate silently. The more extensions you install, the more your keyboard belongs to someone else’s defaults.
Most developers don’t notice until something breaks. And by then, it’s hard to know what changed, when, or why.
🧩 Why I built Harmonia Shortcuts
I wanted a simple answer to a simple question: which extension shortcuts am I actually using?
Not a keybinding editor. Not a conflict resolver with complex rules. Just a way to see every shortcut that extensions added to my environment, and decide – one by one or in bulk – whether I want them active.
That’s what Harmonia Shortcuts does. It reads every extension’s contributed keybindings, shows them grouped by extension, and lets you:
- Approve the ones you want to keep.
- Deactivate the ones that get in your way.
- Remap the ones you like but want on a different key.
- Skip the ones you’ll decide about later.
No automation. No heuristics. No “smart” decisions made on your behalf. Just you, your shortcuts, and a clear interface to review them.
🔒 Your shortcuts are sacred
Harmonia never touches your custom keybindings. They are read-only, always protected. The extension only manages what other extensions brought in – the shortcuts you never explicitly chose.
If two extensions compete for the same key, Harmonia shows the conflict and lets you resolve it. If an extension updates and adds new shortcuts, you get a notification so nothing slips through unreviewed.
Everything happens through keybindings.json using standard VS Code mechanisms. No magic, no hidden state.
🐾 Built in good company
This project was built during long coding sessions with my dog Honey by my side – the best coding partner I could have asked for. He listened to every idea, stayed up for every late night, and kept me company through every line of code. Honey passed away, but his presence is part of everything in this project.
✳️ Where to Find It
Harmonia Shortcuts is available now on the Visual Studio Code Marketplace.
✳️ A governance tool, not a productivity hack
Harmonia Shortcuts isn’t about speed or optimization. It’s about intention. It’s a small, honest tool that gives you back something VS Code doesn’t provide out of the box: the ability to consciously decide which shortcuts should be active in your environment.
The life has no shortcuts. But your editor should only have the ones you chose.