Explorer Exclude Manager

Explorer Exclude Manager is an independently maintained fork of Explorer Exclude for Visual Studio Code. It preserves the familiar Explorer hide/show workflow while improving configuration isolation, glob handling, and compatibility with current VS Code versions.

This project is independently maintained and published by MadCatPX. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the original project author sfccdevops.

Features

Hide files and folders from Explorer, Search Results, and Quick Open.
Manage hidden entries from the Excluded Items Explorer pane.
Support single-root and multi-root workspaces.
Toggle hidden entries and groups without manually editing settings.
Manage files.exclude and search.exclude independently.
Preserve grouped glob patterns such as **/{__pycache__,.pytest_cache}.

Explorer Exclude Manager changes VS Code exclusion settings. It never deletes or moves files.

Installation

Install the extension from the VS Code Extensions view by searching for Explorer Exclude Manager, or install a packaged .vsix file with Extensions: Install from VSIX....

For a source checkout and contribution guidance, see Developer Setup.

Usage

Hide files and folders

In the VS Code Explorer, right-click a file or folder and choose Add to Excludes....
Choose File Excludes to update files.exclude, Search Excludes to update search.exclude, or both when the resource should be hidden from both places.
With the pattern picker enabled (the default), select one or more proposed glob patterns. The extension writes the selected patterns to the workspace setting you chose.

To skip the pattern picker and add the selected resource's workspace-relative path directly, configure:

{
  "explorerExcludeManager.showPicker": false
}

Manage excluded items

Open the Excluded Items pane in Explorer to review the effective exclusions. Entries are grouped by File Excludes and Search Excludes, then by Global and Workspace scope. Global groups are collapsed by default.

Select an entry to toggle whether that pattern is active. Toggling a global rule creates a workspace override rather than changing the global setting.
Right-click a workspace entry and choose Remove from Hidden Items to delete it from the corresponding workspace setting.
Use the inline group actions to enable, disable, reset, or open the relevant VS Code setting for that group. File Excludes also provides a group visibility toggle.
Use Reset Hidden Items to restore workspace exclusions that this extension previously changed; VS Code asks for confirmation first.

Configuration behavior

Explorer Exclude Manager manages the following built-in VS Code settings:

files.exclude
search.exclude

These are shared VS Code settings, not fork-specific copies. The extension writes changes to the workspace scope so project exclusions do not unintentionally copy user-level exclusions into a workspace. In a multi-root workspace, review the workspace-level settings and ensure generated relative patterns match the intended folder.

Grouped glob keys are retained as complete patterns. For example:

{
  "files.exclude": {
    "**/{__pycache__,.pytest_cache}": true
  }
}

The grouped key remains one entry rather than being split into separate patterns.

Migrating from Explorer Exclude

Explorer Exclude Manager uses the fork-owned explorerExcludeManager.* namespace. On activation, it automatically migrates explicitly configured values for these original extension settings:

explorerExclude.backup to explorerExcludeManager.backup
explorerExclude.showPicker to explorerExcludeManager.showPicker

Migration preserves the original user, workspace, or workspace-folder scope and does not overwrite a value already configured for Explorer Exclude Manager. It does not copy files.exclude or search.exclude, because those are already shared VS Code settings.

After migration, uninstalling the original Explorer Exclude extension is recommended. Both extensions manage the same built-in exclusion settings, and keeping both enabled can lead to conflicting backups or unexpected changes.

Compatibility

Explorer Exclude Manager requires VS Code 1.110.0 or newer. See Troubleshooting for installation, migration, configuration, and workspace issues.

Support

When opening an issue, include your VS Code version, Explorer Exclude Manager version, operating system, workspace type, relevant files.exclude or search.exclude settings, and steps to reproduce the issue.

Credits and attribution

Explorer Exclude Manager is based on the original Explorer Exclude project by Peter Schmalfeldt and SFCC DevOps.

Original author contact: https://peterschmalfeldt.com

Copyright (c) 2019 SFCC DevOps

The original copyright notice and MIT License are retained in this repository.

License

Explorer Exclude Manager is distributed under the MIT License.