Multi-Cursor Script Editing - Full Release!

Hey Developers!

We are thrilled to announce the full release of Multi-Cursor Script Editing!

Since the launch of the beta in March, the team has been listening to your feedback and has been hard at work to make improvements! For an in-depth look at how to use Multi-Cursor to improve your scripting experience, please visit the documentation page.

What’s New?

Column/Block Select

Using a keyboard shortcut, highlight blocks of code or whitespace, cursors will be placed at the end of the selected block.

Shortcut on Windows: Shift + Alt + Drag

Shortcut on Mac: ⇧ + ⌥ + Drag

ColumnBlockSelect (1)

Split Selections into Lines

Place cursors at the end of each line in a multi-line selection and at the end of the selection.

Shortcut on Windows: Shift + Alt + I

Shortcut on Mac: ⇧ + ⌥ + I

SplitSelectionsIntoLines

Match Case/Whole Word

Update the selection criteria to match by case and/or whole word for the following functions:

  • Add Cursor to Next/Prev Matching Selection
  • Add Cursor to All Matching Selections

To do this, open the Find/Replace tool ( Ctrl/⌘ + F) and use the buttons to choose if the selection matched should be case sensitive and/or match the word only.

Note: By default, the selection criteria will not be by case or whole word!

MatchCaseWholeWord1

MatchCaseWholeWord2 (1)

On-Type Formatting

Pressing enter/return will auto-indent each cursor at the new line relative to the previous line. If the previous line starts with an incomplete block, the formatter will try to complete it.

OnTypeFormatting (1)

Scroll Bar Markers

Visual indicators are shown on the scroll bar to help identify cursor locations.

ScrollBarMarkers

Responses to User Feedback

The team has been keeping track of bugs reported by the community and has been hard at work resolving them. The following issues have been identified and addressed:

  • Dragging and dropping a selection will now move the selection
  • Ctrl+Left/Right keys now move the cursor to the end of the token instead of the beginning of the next one
  • Resolved the high CPU usage and general performance issues

If you run into any more issues, we highly encourage you to report them, we would love to continue to improve your scripting experience!

Summary of Features

Feature Windows macOS
Add/Remove Cursor at Mouse Alt + Click ⌥ + Click
Remove Most Recently Added Cursor Ctrl + U ⌘ + U
Add Cursor Above/Below Above: Ctrl + Alt + ↑
Below: Ctrl + Alt + ↓
Above:
⌘+⌥ + ↑

Below: ⌘ + ⌥ + ↓
Add Cursor to Next Matching Selection Ctrl + D ⌘ + D
Add Cursor to Every Matching Selection Shift + Alt + L ⇧ + ⌥ + L
Add/Modify Cursor with Mouse Drag Alt + Drag ⌥ + Drag
Column/Block Select Shift + Alt + Drag ⇧ + ⌥ + Drag
Split Selections into Lines Shift + Alt + I ⇧ + ⌥ + + I

Release Plan

Multi-Cursor Editing has begun rollout and will continue to ramp up to 100% in the coming days. The team will be closely monitoring for any potential issues throughout the release process and beyond.

We are extremely excited to see how this will improve the scripting experience for our Developers!


A huge thank you to the following for their amazing efforts in developing this feature: @HugoBLH, @BobaTops, @code4xp, @mugiwarasuuper, @windy0724, @Infomancer, @idevride, @IgnisRBX, and @rusi_002!

Happy scripting!

442 Likes

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

Now this is great. I don’t know how many times I wished I had the ability to have multiple cursors.

I’m used to VS code for my hobbies and always wanted this feature for Roblox studio.

You have just blown it out of the water with all of this extra functionality.

Thank you very much.

84 Likes

I have really enjoyed using this, my code usually doesn’t contain repetition, but it still helps me out when it does. Even just a fun thing to mess around with, especially for renaming variables.

42 Likes

Definitely a step in the right direction! I do want to ask though, with this better support for Multi-Cursor, will we see better support for cursor related features in the future. Currently with plugin’s custom Auto-Complete feature it can be a nightmare to figure out what word the user is attempting to autocomplete, giving the cursor at the start of the auto-complete option would make it a lot easier.

Overall though I’m extremely pleased with Roblox’s ongoing updates, it seems a switch was flipped somewhere and we may not know what switch was flipped, but I’m glad it happened!

37 Likes

As someone who has been curious ever since the beta release came out, I am very happy to see that we have an overall launch for the feature!

One of the things that I would to point out is that Scroll Bar Markers could have also a shortcut indicating how it is possible to select the code using the keyboard up and down arrows. I tried to make a play-along while holding ALT, but it seems that it just switch to other lines :sweat_smile:

(Once again, it is a great feature, thanks for making such an amazing thing that double helps developers)

20 Likes

I think out of all of this, CTRL + D and SHIFT + ALT + L are my two favourite features of this. I’d never even thought of multi-cursor editing until the beta was announced because I’ve never used it in any other IDEs. This update is going to make refactoring code that little bit easier!

21 Likes

This is a game changer. I have been waiting for this for a while now and am super glad it’s finally here. Can’t wait to give it a test run!

19 Likes

You have no idea how much I’ve long waited for this feature!

19 Likes

Thank you for this amazingly useful feature that I use all the time.

The second half of the above is a lie, I use vscode.


--#region support when?!

19 Likes

What a brilliant update.

Glad to see roblox is listening and stepping in the right direction when it comes to ease of access in studio.

I think we should be seeing more VSCode features built into the Roblox IDE such as this, and maybe a code minimap in the next update :eyes:

20 Likes

I see you guys are learning or thing or too from the big boy editors, I expect too see smooth cursor animation added soon… :slight_smile:

19 Likes

Amazing! I can see myself using this to save from tedious hours restating lines of code one by one, I love the direction the updates are going in right now, I’d love to see more of the same :happy2:

17 Likes

Now this is one hot of a feature

15 Likes

I’ve been using multi-cursor in VS Code, and this will definitely solve all of my problems when it comes to the many keys in a table which I need to configure. A very long overdue feature we were all missing.

13 Likes

Cool feature, but the code

print("I love multi-cursor!")
print("I love multi-cursor!")
print("I love multi-cursor!")
print("I love multi-cursor!")

Gave me severe anxiety. :cold_sweat:
I don’t really find this useful though. I think that this feature will be forgotten very quickly.

14 Likes

Oh my god thank you!
The amount of times I needed to append test codes to things were so daunting before, I really wanted this feature since Visual Studio Code had this. I am super grateful!

13 Likes

Alt + Shift is typical shortcut for switching keyboard layouts. So an alternative is needed, for example on middle click like in IntelliJ IDEA or VS Code.

17 Likes

This will be very useful. You guys are heading in the right direction, I mean good update after good update. Good Job!

12 Likes

Everyone is celebrating this, like their trying to look good to their boss. Like Roblox is going through the comments to tell you thank you. You all are giving vague “claps of approval”. Be real with yourself. lol.

I see this and I feel its not useful in the sense that Find All/Replace All is better. Don’t @ me. Seems like a side tool that few Roblox employees used for a while. Then it came up in a meeting, which is why its added.

11 Likes