Toggling Between Fullscreen Editor and Terminal In VSCode and Cursor

November 18, 2025: This article was originally published on June 4, 2024 and later updated for clarity after I returned to it and couldn't figure out which file to modify!

I've been a Vim user for decades however a few years ago I switched to VS Code and then subsequently Cursor for my web development work. When building modern web apps you'll spend almost as much time running shell commands as coding, so I need to have a terminal within easy reach at all times. In fact I typically keep several terminal tabs open, including one opened to the local MySQL instance, one running a worker, and one to execute various shell commands including those related to managing my Git repository.

I want this transition between editor and terminal to be as seamless as possible and so I setup two keyboard shortcuts to help me quickly move back and forth between the two. Furthermore, the transition will always open the terminal in fullscreen mode so I'm not fighting with screen real estate on a laptop. To configure these shortcuts, open the keyboard shortcuts (keybindings.json) file in JSON mode and add the following entries:

  {
    "key": "shift+cmd+2",
    "command": "workbench.action.closePanel"
  },
  {
    "key": "shift+cmd+2",
    "command": "workbench.action.toggleMaximizedPanel",
    "when": "!terminalFocus"
  }

I've used shift+cmd+2 for the toggling shortcut, however you can switch this to whatever you'd like. If you're running Windows I suppose you would change the shortcut to shift-ctrl+2 or something like that. Once defined, save the changes and then try using the keyboard shortcut to switch between the two. With the terminal maximized your VS Code enviroment will look like this:

If you have any other VS Code screen optimization tips, I'd love to hear about them! Hit me up on Twitter at @wjgilmore.