VSCode - navigate in the file tree with the keyboard

Question

I love VSCode but I am really missing one feature from its big brother Visual Studio.

In Visual Studio you load the file in the editor when you navigate to it and if you press enter you jump to into the editor and can start editing the file.

How can I do the same in VSCode?

VSCode keyboard shortcuts reference

Answer 1

You can do it by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + E .

It will focus on the explorer sidebar, then you can navigate through the keyboard arrows.

Answer 2

on a MacOS, you'd use CMD + SHIFT + E to focus on the sidebar. Then you can use the arrow keys to navigate up and down the tree. To open an file or expand a folder, you can hit the spacebar key