Regex IntelliSense

Hover over any regular expression in your code to get an instant, plain-English explanation — right inside VS Code.

No more opening regex101.com mid-flow. Understand your patterns without leaving the editor.

Features

Hover explanations — plain-English description of what a regex does
Named pattern detection — recognizes 25+ common patterns (email, URL, phone, date, UUID, IP address, hex color, and more)
Component breakdown — optionally shows each part of the regex explained individually
Example matches — shows what the pattern would match for known patterns
Multiple syntax forms — understands regex literals (/pattern/flags), new RegExp(...) constructors, and string-based patterns inside .match(), .test(), .replace(), etc.

Regex IntelliSense Demo

JavaScript · TypeScript · JSX/TSX · Python · Java · Go · Ruby · PHP · Rust · C# · JSON · Perl

Search for Regex IntelliSense in the VS Code Extensions panel (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X) and click Install.

Or install from the command line:

ext install MuhammadAliJaved.regex-intellisense

Setting	Type	Default	Description
`regexIntelliSense.enable`	`boolean`	`true`	Enable or disable hover explanations
`regexIntelliSense.showDetailed`	`boolean`	`false`	Show component-by-component breakdown of the regex
`regexIntelliSense.showExamples`	`boolean`	`true`	Show example matches for recognized patterns

Configure in your settings.json:

{
  "regexIntelliSense.enable": true,
  "regexIntelliSense.showDetailed": true,
  "regexIntelliSense.showExamples": true
}

When you hover over a regex in your code, the extension:

Detects whether it's a regex literal, RegExp constructor call, or string pattern in a method call
Parses the pattern into its components
Checks against a library of named patterns (email, URL, UUID, etc.)
Renders a clean Markdown tooltip with the explanation

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for larger changes so we can discuss the approach.