Visual Studio Code for Python Developers Transcripts
Chapter: Exploring the Editor
Lecture: The Status Bar
Login or
purchase this course
to watch this video and the rest of the course contents.
0:00
Let's explore the status bar a bit further to understand its purpose and functionality and how it is commonly used.
0:07
The status bar is a fundamental component of the Visual Studio Code user interface or UI.
0:12
It's located at the bottom of the window as we mentioned earlier and provides essential information and indicators to enhance your coding experience.
0:20
The status bar consists of various key components that display relevant information and facilitate interaction.
0:26
One of them being language mode. This indicates the programming language or file type of the currently active file.
0:32
In this case, I have a Python file opened up and it correctly detected that right here as you can see the language mode that I'm currently in.
0:43
If I click on that, you can see that it auto detected the language mode, but I could manually change it to something else in case it did so incorrectly for some reason.
0:52
The status bar also shows line and column numbers. This.
0:56
Displays the current cursor position in terms of the line and column numbers in the active file.
1:01
So if you notice right here, LN for line number 10 and COL column number 16. It goes directly to that.
1:09
If I want to go to another one, I can click on this and I can say maybe line number 20 that's available or 15 in this case.
1:17
It moves the cursor to those positions for me.
1:21
But as you move it around, maybe with your arrow keys on your keyboard, you'll see those numbers changing.
1:26
Such as the line number and the column that the cursor is actively at.
1:31
In addition to line number and column numbers that are shown in the status bar, you can also see the indentation that's being used in the active editor.
1:38
This shows the indentation settings being used in that active file. In this case, we're using four spaces. But I can change that to indent using tabs.
1:48
I can change the tab size and other options within that action. Last but not least is Git integration.
1:56
That can potentially be shown in the bottom of the status bar. In this case, I'm not using a Git source controlled project.
2:03
But if you were and had that open in Visual Studio Code, it would be shown in the status bar. Okay, so that's a high level overview of the status bar.
2:12
One other thing I'd like to call out, at least, as is the case with most of Visual Studio Code, we can customize the status bar to our liking a little bit.
2:19
If you right click on the status bar, you'll get this menu with a bunch of different names of things and checkboxes. Next.
2:26
So, as we were talking about before, we can see the editor indentation or the editor end of line or the encoding.
2:34
All these options that are currently being displayed in the status bar, we can choose whether they are actually shown or not.
2:40
So, maybe I don't want notifications to be available, which is that bell icon in the bottom right hand corner. Right now, I have no notifications.
2:47
That's where they would show up if you'd like to see them and read about them further.
2:51
But maybe I don't want to see those or I don't want to see the feedback icon capability anymore.
2:56
I can click on that and you'll notice that the status bar has now been customized to my liking. And you can do so how you choose that fits you best.
3:05
And that is the status bar.