Window Color Guard

Stop mixing up VS Code windows and giving AI agents commands meant for another server.

When several windows are open, it's easy to type a command or agent prompt into the wrong one. Window Color Guard gives each window and workspace its own color, so you can tell at a glance which project or server you're in. It's useful with Remote-SSH and with coding agents such as Claude Code and GitHub Copilot.

Each window gets its own color on the title bar, status bar and border, plus a thin line beside the activity bar. The extension runs only on the local machine, including for Remote-SSH windows, and nothing is installed on the server.

The color is saved in the workspace's .vscode/settings.json, which VS Code requires for per-window colors. VS Code applies those theme colors itself, so the color stays whether or not the extension is installed. It also appears for anyone who opens that folder on the same server, or on another computer. To remove it, run Window Color Guard: Remove Color From This Workspace before uninstalling, or delete the windowColor.color and workbench.colorCustomizations entries from that file afterwards.

• New file in a git repo: listed in .git/info/exclude, so it isn't committed.
• File already tracked by git: asks first.

To fix a color, put a hex value in a file named .vscode-window-color:

#d32f2f

The extension checks the open folder, then each parent, and the closest file wins. It reads the file when the window loads. Put one in a server's home directory to color every folder under it. Without a file, the color is random.

Commands: Window Color Guard: New Random Color and Window Color Guard: Remove Color From This Workspace.

Windows with no folder open can't be colored.