Automatically hard wrap lines at column in VSCode

Question

How can I automatically hard wrap lines in VSCode? By that I mean if a line reaches a specified column, automatically insert a newline at the word boundary closest to that column without going over. Vim has a setting called textwidth that does this that I like to use when editing Markdown. It doesn't seem like VSCode does, as far as I can tell. It just has ways to control softwrapping.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, VSCode doesn't have this feature yet. But, we still can make it to be as close as vim automatic word wrapping beautiful feature.

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First Step

We need to setup soft word wrap feature in VSCode.

1. Open VSCode Settings via Code => Preferences => Settings.

2. Add these 3 lines of editor settings.

   "editor.wordWrap": "wordWrapColumn",
   "editor.wrappingIndent": "same",
   "editor.wordWrapColumn": n
   

   Don't forget to change (n) with your preferred length of columns line. For me, I feel more comfortable to set it to 60.

3. Save this setting.

The main purpose of this first step is to make us feel more comfortable when we're typing because we don't need to manually type Enter and see a long line of text.

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Second Step

We need to install Vim emulation for VSCode and set vim textwidth.

1. Install Vim emulation via VSCode extensions.
2. Open VSCode Settings via Code => Preferences => Settings.

3. Add this line of vim setting.

   "vim.textwidth": n,
   

   Don't forget to change (n) with your preferred length of columns line. For me, I will set this to be the same with (n) in the first step.

4. Save this setting.

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Actual Use

When you finish to write your whole document, you can format it to be hard wrap lines using this way.

1. Block all text using visual line mode (Shift + v)
2. Type 'gq'

Answer 2

There is currently an Open request for this in the VS Code Issue tracker on GitHub, You Can Find It Here

Answer 3

Hard Wrap Comments

Use the Rewrap extension.

Soft Wrap Code

Add the following setting (replace column width with your preference): "editor.wordWrapColumn": 100

Then add either "editor.wordWrap": "wordWrapColumn" (wraps at the column) or "editor.wordWrap": "bounded" (wraps at either the column or the viewport).

Hard Wrap Comments and Soft Wrap Code

Unfortunately the extension and VSCode settings do not play nicely.

Feel free to upvote this feature request.

Answer 4

VSCode doesn't support this out of the box. But you can install the Rewrap extension, which allows you to format the block that your cursor is currently in by pressing Alt + Q.

Rewrap requires no further settings, since it reads VSCode's settings to obtain the column at which to break.

While Rewrap is not automatic (you need to press the keyboard shortcut whenever you want to format), automatic hard wrapping seems to be a feature that will come in the next Rewrap release: https://github.com/stkb/Rewrap/issues/45