Kiyo Tree Indent Guide Color

Customize the Explorer tree indent guide colors in Visual Studio Code from the Command Palette — without ever opening settings.json.

VS Code lets you recolor the vertical lines (indent guides) in the file Explorer through workbench.colorCustomizations, but doing it by hand means hunting down the right keys, getting the hex format right, and remembering to clean up afterwards. This extension turns that into four one-shot commands.

On first activation, the extension also seeds tree.indentGuidesStroke with its signature color #2EB192 — so the moment you install it, the Explorer indent guides look the part. Any value you already have is left untouched.

Features

• Sensible default on install — tree.indentGuidesStroke is seeded with #2EB192 the first time the extension activates, only if you haven't set it yourself.
• One-command color changes — set the active or inactive indent guide stroke directly from the Command Palette.
• Live hex validation — accepts #RGB, #RRGGBB, #RGBA, and #RRGGBBAA; invalid input is rejected before it ever touches your settings.
• Non-destructive writes — only the two target keys (tree.indentGuidesStroke and tree.inactiveIndentGuidesStroke) are read, modified, and written back. Every other entry in workbench.colorCustomizations is preserved.
• Clean reset — removes only the two keys this extension manages. If they were the only entries, the empty workbench.colorCustomizations object is cleared so your settings file stays tidy.
• Zero runtime dependencies — pure VS Code Extension API and TypeScript.

Commands

All commands appear in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P). Type kiyo- to find them quickly.

When prompted, the input pre-fills with the current value (if any), so tweaking an existing color is a single keystroke.

How it works

The extension reads your User settings, edits a shallow copy of workbench.colorCustomizations, and writes the result back to the Global (User) configuration target. Workspace settings and the rest of your color customizations are left untouched.

The resulting User settings.json looks like this:

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "tree.indentGuidesStroke": "#00ffcc",
    "tree.inactiveIndentGuidesStroke": "#444444"
  }
}

If those are the only two keys when you run kiyo-reset colors, the entire workbench.colorCustomizations object is cleared rather than left as {}.

Hex color format

The input box accepts any of the standard VS Code hex formats:

Anything else (named colors, missing #, wrong length) is rejected inline before submit.

Requirements

• Visual Studio Code 1.85.0 or newer.

Extension settings

This extension contributes no settings of its own — it only writes to the standard workbench.colorCustomizations setting that VS Code ships with.

Known limitations

• The extension always writes to the Global (User) configuration target. If you have these keys set at the Workspace or Folder level, those will continue to override the Global value — VS Code itself controls that precedence.
• Theme-scoped overrides (entries like "[Default Dark+]": { ... } inside workbench.colorCustomizations) are not touched. The two keys are read and written at the top level only, matching the most common configuration.

Release notes

0.1.0

• Initial release.
• Four commands: kiyo-set active color, kiyo-set inactive color, kiyo-set both colors, kiyo-reset colors.
• Live hex validation for #RGB, #RRGGBB, #RGBA, #RRGGBBAA.
• Non-destructive updates that preserve other workbench.colorCustomizations entries.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at the project repository.

License

MIT