A productivity extension for Visual Studio that instantly reveals hidden tool windows, restores your preferred layouts, closes clutter, and lets you stash/restore tool window configurations with one click.
This extension is designed for developers who want:
- Faster navigation inside Visual Studio
- A clean, uncluttered workspace
- Quick access to Solution Explorer
- One‑click restore of favourite tool window layouts
- A reliable way to close all tool windows without resetting the entire environment
Keywords: Visual Studio extension, tool windows, close tool windows, restore layout, stash tool windows, productivity, VS2019, VS2022, VS2026, solution explorer missing, window layout reset, Visual Studio tools, developer productivity, IDE workflow
Features at a Glance (yes, I used AI to generate this bit. Guilty as charged. The "How To Use" section onwards is hand-written, so there.)
🔍 Instantly Reveal Solution Explorer
Brings Solution Explorer fully into view even when partially or completely off‑screen.
Perfect for escaping “Tool Window Hell” without resetting your entire layout.
Save groups of tool windows and restore them later with a single click.
How to use
After installing the extension, you should see four new commands (circled in image) on the Visual Studio Tools menu :
- The first command, Show Solution Explorer will make the solution explorer FULLY VISIBLE even if it was partially or mostly offscreen before.
- The second command, Close all Tool Windows except Solution Explorer will close all tool windows except the solution explorer - very useful when you're in Tool Window Hell.
- The third command, Close all Tool Windows is the nuclear option and does as you expect. Every tool window goes, but your code windows will be left untouched.
- The fourth command, Stash/Restore tool windows is for power users. This pops up a floating tool window which allows you to stash (save) and restore tool windows configurations at the click of a button! More below.
"What's a stash?" you ask? It's a collection of tool windows that you save for later retrieval. (Or rather, if being technical, references to tool windows)
- First use Visual Studio's View menu to view the tool windows you'd like to stash. This brings the tool windows into the Stash/Restore Tool Window's "view".
- If you can't see all of the tool windows in the list because the listbox is too small, there's a horizontal splitter bar just above the Stashes collapsible panel.
- Now click the Stash/Restore tool windows menu item on the Tools menu. The Stash/Restore Tool Windows modeless tool window should appear. It looks like this (NB: the list contents will differ from what you see):
Creating a stash (do this second!)
- Hit the Refresh button to list the available tool windows (shortcut is F5).
- Note the use of the word available rather than "visible" - once Visual Studio opens a tool window, even if its invisible, its usually still lurking.
- Select the tool windows you wish to stash by checking the respective checkboxes, if not already checked for you.
- Click the Stash Checked button. A stash for the checked tool windows will be pushed to the top of the stash list - yes, just like a LIFO stack. You can now use the Pop/Apply stash functions to show the stashed tool windows in one go, rather than the chore of doing it with the View Menu!
- Add more toolbar windows via Visual Studio's View menu and stash them too, if you like. There's no limit to the amount of stashes you can add, although I wouldn't recommend adding hundreds.
- If you do add a lot of stashes and screen real estate is getting tight, remember there's a horizontal splitter bar above the Stashes button which you can use to size the stashes listbox. And of course, you can size the Stash/Restore tool window as well.
- Stashes persist between Visual Studio sessions, until you Drop (delete) or Pop (restore then delete) them.
Applying a stash
- Tool windows in a stash can be applied (shown) at ANY TIME, simply by double left-clicking on a stash list item. You can also right click on a stashed item to get a context menu which lets you specify how to apply the stash - see "The Stash item context menu" section below.
Popping a stash
- If you want to pop the top item from the list, you can use either the Pop (Merge) or the Pop (Abs) button.
- Pop (Merge) will merge the tool windows in the popped stash with those currently visible.
- Pop (Abs) , where Abs is short for Absolute, will replace currently visible tool windows with those referred to by the popped stash.
- The Pop operation permanently deletes the stash item. If you don't want to delete the stash, use the Apply functionality in the context menu (see below)
Dropping a stash
- Drop All permanently deletes all stashes. You will be asked to confirm if you are sure, as deletion cannot be undone.
- You can drop individual stashes by using the context menu - see below.
When you right click on a stash item, the item will be selected and a context menu will appear:
- **Apply (Merge)** will **merge** the tool windows in the selected stash with those currently visible.
- **Apply (Absolute)** will **replace** the currently visible tool windows with those in the selected stash.
- **Hide All ref'd by Stash** will hide all of the tool windows referenced by the selected stash.
- **Drop** will delete the selected stash permanently.
Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts (recommended)
I recommend you assign keyboard shortcuts to these commands. To do this, click Tools | Options then open Environment | Keyboard, like so:
Search for ScottTunstall in the Show Commands Containing textbox. You should see the four commands listed on screen. Assign shortcuts to each command as desired.
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