How can I customize the tab-to-space conversion factor?

How do I customize the tab-to-space conversion factor when using Visual Studio Code?

For instance, right now in HTML it appears to produce two spaces per press of TAB, but in TypeScript it produces 4.

Solution 1:

By default, Visual Studio Code will try to guess your indentation options depending on the file you open.

You can turn off indentation guessing via "editor.detectIndentation": false.

You can customize this easily via these three settings for Windows in menu File → Preferences → User Settings and for Mac in menu Code → Preferences → Settings or ⌘,:

// The number of spaces a tab is equal to. This setting is overridden
// based on the file contents when `editor.detectIndentation` is true.
"editor.tabSize": 4,

// Insert spaces when pressing Tab. This setting is overriden
// based on the file contents when `editor.detectIndentation` is true.
"editor.insertSpaces": true,

// When opening a file, `editor.tabSize` and `editor.insertSpaces`
// will be detected based on the file contents. Set to false to keep
// the values you've explicitly set, above.
"editor.detectIndentation": false

Solution 2:

I'm running version 1.21, but I think this may apply to earlier versions as well.

Take a look at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. You should see something that says Spaces or Tab-Size.

Mine shows spaces, →

1. Click on the Spaces (or Tab-Size)
2. Choose Indent Using Spaces or Indent using Tabs
3. Select the amount of spaces or tabs you like.

This only works per document, not project-wide. If you want to apply it project-wide, you need to also add "editor.detectIndentation": false to your user settings.