How to Edit Snippets

To modify code you’ve saved to your personal repository, you can use the Pieces Drive view in Visual Studio.

If you don’t have it open, use the command palette shortcut ctrl+shift+p and type Pieces Drive, then click it or press enter to open the view.

Inside the Pieces Drive view, you can select the snippet you want to edit from the scrollable list of saved materials, or use the **Search Bar** to enter a query and locate your desired snippet. To start editing the material saved from your repository, click the **Pencil Icon**. Hovering over this icon reveals an `Edit Selected Material` + `ctrl+e` tooltip. Once you click the **Pencil Icon,** your saved code will open in a new tab and automatically be redirected to that tab. Make your changes as needed. 
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After making the desired changes to the code snippet, use `ctrl+s` to save the snippet, after which you will be returned to your active file. 
You’ll see a success message at the top of the active file indicating your changes have been made successfully.

Material Management Actions

From within the Pieces Drive view, you can click the three vertical dots to review a Quick Actions tab that shows available metadata that you can view or directly adjust for that snippet.

You can view the table below for a comprehensive list of available actions.

Reclassify Set your custom snippet classification.
Rename Change the name (title) of the material as it appears in your Pieces Drive.
Duplicate Create a duplicate of the saved material—unmodified or modified to be more performant, readable, as a template, or in another language.
Related Links View, add, or remove related resources that provide additional context to the snippet.
Tags Add or remove tags to the snippet’s metadata.
Shareable Link Generate or copy a shareable link for the saved material.
Annotations View or edit the automatically generated description for that saved code.
Anchors Add associated files and directories to the material.
Related People Manage related code authors or coworkers.
Sensitive Information Manually add or remove a sensitive information tag to the snippet, if not automatically generated.
Delete Piece Remove this saved material from Pieces Drive.

Additional Tools while Editing

When you edit a saved snippet, you are opening a new file in Visual Studio to make those edits, which means that other Pieces functionalities, like functionalities provided by Pieces Copilot and Pieces Drive, are entirely available to you.

For example, when editing a snippet, right-clicking selected code will present you with the same toolbar and Pieces-related options (like Save Current Selection to Pieces or Share Current Selection).

This makes it easy to modify your saved code with the power that the Pieces for Visual Studio Extension gives you.