Déjà View

Stop losing your place. Déjà View lets you save your open documents as named worksets and restore them instantly — so you can switch contexts without the friction of remembering what you had open.

The problem

You're deep in an auth refactor — six files open, flow state achieved. A bug comes in and you context-switch. Twenty minutes later you're back, staring at a blank editor trying to remember what you had open.

Déjà View solves this.

How it works

Save your current open documents as a named workset with one click.
Switch to another task. Open whatever you need.
Restore your original workset when you're ready to return.

Features

• Named worksets — save any set of open documents under a meaningful name
• One-click restore — reopen all workset files instantly from the toolbar dropdown
• Edit workset files — add or remove individual files from a workset via the Settings dialog
• Auto-open — designate a workset to restore automatically when the solution loads
• Close unrelated — optionally close documents not in the workset for a clean slate
• Missing file handling — auto-remove files that no longer exist, or be prompted
• Solution-scoped — worksets are stored per solution in the .suo file, invisible to source control
• Portable paths — files stored as solution-relative paths, works across machines and clones
• Large solution support — optimized for solutions with many projects
• VS themed — respects your Visual Studio color theme (Light, Dark, Blue, High Contrast)

Usage

The Déjà View toolbar appears under View → Toolbars → Déjà View.

The extension is also accessible via Tools → Déjà View which toggles the toolbar.

Settings

Open the Settings dialog via the gear icon on the toolbar to:

• Rename a workset
• Edit Files — add or remove individual files from a workset's file list
• Remove a workset
• Auto-Open — check to restore a workset automatically when the solution loads (one per solution)
• Close Unrelated — check to close unrelated documents when restoring (per workset)
• Auto-remove missing files — silently remove files that no longer exist on disk

Data storage

Worksets are stored in the solution's .suo file — the same place Visual Studio stores your breakpoints and window layout. This means:

• Worksets are per-developer — each team member has their own sets
• Worksets are automatically excluded from source control — .suo is gitignored by default
• Worksets are per-solution — switching solutions switches workset lists

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2022 or later
• .NET Framework 4.7.2

Release notes

1.0.3

• Added Edit Files dialog — add or remove individual files from a saved workset
• Delete button in Edit Files dialog disabled until files are checked
• Settings dialog buttons (Rename, Edit Files, Remove) disabled until a workset is selected
• Fixed disabled button text visibility in dark theme

1.0.2

• Fixed open document capture to use visible editor window frames instead of the Running Document Table, preventing previously opened documents from accumulating across workset switches
• Fixed relative path resolution for solutions where source files live outside the solution directory

1.0.1

• Fixed New and Save buttons not enabling in large solutions (79+ projects)
• Optimized button state check to use IVsMonitorSelection instead of full RDT enumeration

1.0.0

• Initial release

Source & feedback

Source code and issue tracker: github.com/MaroisConsulting/DejaView

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on GitHub.