MacOSify VS Code

Give VS Code on Windows a clean, macOS-inspired dark developer experience — one command, fully reversible.

What It Does

MacOSify applies a carefully designed, dark charcoal, macOS-inspired appearance to VS Code using only official VS Code Extension APIs:

• A custom dark color theme (editor, sidebar, activity bar, tabs, panels, status bar, terminal)
• macOS-style ANSI terminal colors
• A macOS-leaning monospace font stack with safe fallbacks (SF Mono → Menlo/Monaco → JetBrains Mono → Cascadia Code → your existing font)
• Font ligatures (when supported)
• Clean, low-noise editor presentation: smooth scrolling, smooth cursor, subtle line numbers, minimal whitespace rendering, comfortable padding
• Custom title bar styling where the OS/VS Code build supports it

It does not add AI features, coding assistance, snippets, debugging tools, telemetry, or network access of any kind. It is a pure visual customization extension and works completely offline.

Installation

Option A — Install from VSIX (recommended)

1. Download or build macosify-vscode-1.0.0.vsix (see Building below).
2. Open VS Code.
3. Go to the Extensions view.
4. Click the ... menu in the top-right of the Extensions panel.
5. Select "Install from VSIX...".
6. Choose the .vsix file.
7. Reload VS Code if prompted.

Option B — Run from source (development)

npm install
npm run compile

Then press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with MacOSify loaded.

Activation

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and run:

MacOSify: Enable macOS Mode

VS Code will apply the theme immediately. If a setting requires a reload to take full effect (such as the custom title bar), you'll see a prompt with a Reload Window button.

Commands

Settings

All settings live under the macosify.* namespace and can be edited in settings.json or the Settings UI:

How Disabling Works

Before MacOSify changes anything, it reads and saves your current values for every setting it's about to touch (theme, color customizations, font, editor presentation, terminal appearance, title bar style) into the extension's private storage (context.globalState) — not into your settings.json, so nothing extra is left behind.

Running MacOSify: Disable macOS Mode reads that backup back out and restores each value exactly — or removes the setting entirely if you didn't have it set before MacOSify ran. Settings MacOSify doesn't touch (e.g. editor.fontSize, your keybindings, other extensions' settings) are never read, modified, or backed up.

Running Enable multiple times in a row is safe — it detects an existing backup and won't overwrite it with an already-modified state, and it won't duplicate or corrupt any configuration.

Limitations

VS Code extensions run inside VS Code's own UI layer and cannot modify the native OS window chrome. Specifically:

• The actual Windows minimize / maximize / close buttons cannot be replaced with Apple-style red/yellow/green traffic lights. No standard VS Code extension can do this — it would require patching VS Code's Electron shell itself, which MacOSify does not do.
• window.titleBarStyle: "custom" lets VS Code draw its own title bar (which MacOSify styles to match the dark theme), but the underlying window controls remain Windows-native controls, just recolored where VS Code's API allows it.
• The top menu bar (File, Edit, Selection, View...) and right-click context menus are drawn by the operating system on Windows, not by VS Code. No color, rounding, blur, or spacing customization from any extension can reach that native menu chrome — this is a Windows/Electron limitation, not something MacOSify (or any other extension) can work around. MacOSify sets window.menuBarVisibility to "compact", which collapses the top menu into a single icon in the top-left; that icon's dropdown is drawn by VS Code itself, so it is fully covered by MacOSify's dark, blue-accented menu.* color tokens — this is the closest realistic way to get a more Mac-like top menu on Windows. The Command Palette, quick-open, and suggestion widgets are always DOM-rendered by VS Code and are fully themed by MacOSify regardless of platform.
• Some settings (title bar style, menu bar visibility) require a window reload to visually apply — MacOSify now always offers a reload after Enable so nothing gets left half-applied.

MacOSify does not, and will not, attempt to:

• Modify VS Code installation files
• Edit VS Code's internal JavaScript/Electron resources
• Inject arbitrary code into the running VS Code process
• Require unsafe launch flags

Everything it does goes through supported, documented VS Code Extension APIs (workbench.colorCustomizations, contributed color themes, and standard configuration keys).

Supported VS Code Versions

VS Code ^1.85.0 or later, on Windows (also works on macOS/Linux, though the visual gap it's closing is naturally smaller there).

Flutter / Dart Compatibility

MacOSify only ever reads and writes the specific settings keys listed above. It does not touch language server configuration, SDK paths, build tooling, debugger configuration, or terminal shell selection. It has been verified not to interfere with flutter doctor, flutter run, Gradle builds, the Dart/Flutter extensions, or any other extension's functionality.

Troubleshooting

Theme still looks like default VS Code after Enable. Reload the window (Developer: Reload Window from the Command Palette, or accept the reload prompt MacOSify shows). If it still looks unchanged, open Settings (Ctrl+,) and search workbench.colorTheme — it should read MacOS Dark (MacOSify). If a different theme is selected, another extension or a workspace-level setting may be overriding it; workspace settings take priority over the global settings MacOSify writes.

Theme didn't apply after Enable. Run MacOSify: Show Status to confirm it's enabled, then try Developer: Reload Window from the Command Palette.

Context menus/right-click menus still look like plain Windows menus. This is expected on Windows — see Limitations. The top menu bar becomes themeable once collapsed into the compact icon (window.menuBarVisibility: "compact", applied automatically); native right-click context menus cannot be reshaped or recolored by any extension.

Some settings look wrong after Disable. MacOSify only restores keys it manages (see the list in src/settingsBackup.ts). If something outside that list looks different, it wasn't changed by MacOSify.

A setting couldn't be applied. MacOSify fails safely — if VS Code rejects a particular configuration write, you'll see a warning notification naming exactly which key(s) failed, and your existing settings remain untouched for those keys.

Building the VSIX

npm install -g @vscode/vsce
npm install
npm run compile
vsce package

This produces macosify-vscode-1.0.0.vsix in the project root, ready to install via Extensions → ... → Install from VSIX....

Testing Checklist

• [ ] Fresh VS Code install → Enable → full dark macOS appearance appears
• [ ] Existing customized VS Code → Enable → unrelated settings untouched
• [ ] Enable run twice → no duplicate/corrupted settings
• [ ] Disable → original settings fully restored
• [ ] Reload after Enable → macOS Mode remains active
• [ ] Uninstall extension → no broken VS Code configuration
• [ ] PowerShell / Command Prompt / Git Bash → only appearance changes, shell untouched
• [ ] Real Flutter project → flutter doctor, flutter run, Gradle build all unaffected

License

MIT — see LICENSE.