Options dialog box: Text Editor > General

This dialog box lets you change global settings for the Visual Studio code and text editor. To display this dialog box, select Options on the Tools menu, expand the Text Editor folder, and then select General.

Settings

The Settings section of Tools > Options > Text Editor > General includes the following options.

Drag and drop text editing

When selected, this setting enables you to move text by selecting and then dragging it with the mouse to another location within the current document or any other open document.

Automatic delimiter highlighting

When selected, delimiter characters that separate parameters or item-value pairs, as well as matching braces, are highlighted.

Track changes

When the code editor is selected, a vertical yellow line appears in the selection margin to mark code that has changed since the file was most recently saved. When you save the changes, the vertical lines become green.

Auto-detect UTF-8 encoding without signature

By default, the editor detects encoding by searching for byte order marks or charset tags. If neither is found in the current document, the code editor tries to autodetect UTF-8 encoding by scanning byte sequences. To disable the autodetection of encoding, clear this option.

Follow project coding conventions

When selected, any project specific code style settings specified in an EditorConfig file added to the project override any local code style settings specified in the Options dialog box by selecting Text Editor > Language, for example, C# > Code Style > General.

Tip

To learn more about coding conventions and how they are applied, see the Create portable, custom editor settings with EditorConfig page.

Enable mouse click to perform Go to Definition

When selected, you can press Ctrl and hover over an element while clicking the mouse. Doing so takes you to the definition of the selected element. You can also choose either Alt or Ctrl + Alt from the Use modifier key drop-down.

Open definition in peek view

Select this checkbox to display the element's definition in a window without navigating away from your current location in the code editor. For more information, see How to: View and edit code by using Peek Definition.

Display

The Display section of Tools > Options > Text Editor > General includes the following options.

View whitespace

When selected, you can visualize spaces and tabs.

When selected, all bidirectional text control characters are rendered as placeholders in the code editor.

Caution

This option is selected by default to prevent a potentially malicious exploit that allows code to be misrepresented.

See the following code snippet for an example of bidirectional control characters:

/// <summary>
/// Bidirectional control characters can invert text direction,
/// which can be exploited to craft malicious code that looks benign.
/// </summary>
/// <example>
/// transferBalance(5678,6776, 4321, "USD");
/// </example>
internal readonly ImmutableArray<char> BiDiControlCharacters = ImmutableArray.CreateRange(new[] {
   '\u061c', // ALM: Arabic letter mark
   '\u200e', // LRM: Left-to-right mark
   '\u200f', // RLM: Right-to-left mark
   '\u202a', // LRE: Left-to-right embedding
   '\u202b', // RLE: Right-to-left embedding
   '\u202c', // PDF: Pop directional formatting
   '\u202d', // LRO: Left-to-right override
   '\u202e', // RLO: Right-to-left override
   '\u2066', // LRI: Left-to-right isolate
   '\u2067', // RLI: Right-to-left isolate
   '\u2068', // FSI: First strong isolate
   '\u2069', // PDI: Pop directional isolate
});

Selection margin

When selected, displays a vertical margin along the left edge of the editor's text area. You can click this margin to select an entire line of text, or click and drag to select consecutive lines of text.

Selection Margin on	Selection Margin off

Indicator margin

When selected, displays a vertical margin outside the left edge of the editor's text area. When you click in this margin, an icon and ToolTip that are related to the text appear. For example, breakpoint or task list shortcuts appear in the indicator margin. Indicator Margin information doesn't print.

Highlight current line

When selected, displays a gray box around the line of code in which the cursor is located.

Show structure guide lines

When selected, vertical lines appear in the editor that line up with structured code blocks, which lets you easily identify the individual blocks of code.

Show error squiggles

When selected, different-colored wavy underlines, known as squiggles, appear in your code. (Red squiggles denote syntax errors, blue denotes compiler errors, green denotes warnings, and purple denotes other types of errors.)

Show file health indicator

When selected, a file health indicator status (errors, warnings) bar, with code cleanup options, is displayed in the lower-left corner of the editor.

Line spacing

Use this control to change the default line spacing of 1.0 to the increment you want, to include 1.15, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0.

Show editing context in the editor

Use this control to toggle the editing context settings altogether, or personalize to your preference by selecting from the following settings:

Line/Col
Selections
Insert/Overwrite
Tab/Space
Line endings

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