Pinboard

A VS Code extension that adds a Pinboard panel inside the Explorer sidebar. Pin any file or folder on disk as a persistent shortcut - independent of your current workspace.

First-time setup: Once installed, the Pinboard panel appears at the bottom of the Explorer sidebar. Drag it to the top if you'd prefer it there. VS Code doesn't allow extensions to control their panel position on install.

Install from:

• Visual Studio Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=daanrosendal.pinboard
• Open VSX Registry: https://open-vsx.org/extension/daanrosendal/pinboard

Support development:

Features

Pin files and folders

Click + in the panel header to pick any file or folder, or right-click any item in the Explorer file tree and choose Pin to Pinboard.

Two persistence scopes

Toggle between Global (pins survive across all workspaces) and Workspace (pins are local to the current workspace) using the scope button in the panel header. Also configurable via Settings > Pinboard > Scope.

Drag to reorder

Drag pinned items to rearrange them. Order is persisted.

Note: VS Code does not expose its internal file drag-and-drop API to extensions, so dragging files between folders to move them is not supported. Drag is limited to reordering pinned root items.

Aliases

Right-click any pinned root item and choose Set Alias… to give it a custom display name. The alias replaces the default label in the panel; the underlying path is unchanged. Clear the alias to revert.

Label style

Configure Settings > Pinboard > Label Style to display pinned root items as the file/folder name (default) or as a path relative to the workspace root — useful in monorepos where multiple pinned folders share the same name. Aliases always take precedence over this setting.

Workspace presets

This is, for instance, useful in large monorepos. Commit a .pinboard.json file to the workspace root to define named pinboard presets, then teammates switch to Workspace scope and click the list selection button in the panel header to open the menu for choosing a preset - letting them replace their current workspace pins with the preset's paths in one step.

{
  "presets": [
    {
      "name": "Frontend Team",
      "paths": [
        { "path": "packages/frontend/src", "alias": "Frontend Source" },
        { "path": "packages/shared", "alias": "Shared Lib" },
        "docs/frontend"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Backend Team",
      "paths": [
        { "path": "packages/backend", "alias": "Backend Service" },
        { "path": "packages/api", "alias": "REST API" },
        { "path": "packages/shared", "alias": "Shared Lib" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Docs & Scripts",
      "paths": ["docs", "scripts", ".github"]
    }
  ]
}

All paths are relative to the workspace root. Paths that don't exist on disk are silently ignored. The extension never modifies .pinboard.json.

Auto-refresh

The panel updates automatically when files or folders are created or deleted inside a pinned directory — no manual refresh needed.

Context menu

Right-click any item for contextual actions:

Note: VS Code does not expose its internal Explorer context menu API to extensions, so this menu is built independently. It covers the most common file operations but is not identical to the native Explorer context menu.

Usage

Extension Settings