File Marks Explorer

Colour your files and folders in the VS Code Explorer. Right-click → Mark — pick a colour, a tag and a note. Marks are stored globally, so they follow you into every project.

Why

• Find the files you actually work in, in a tree full of everything else.
• No config files in your repo, nothing committed by accident.
• Works on a multi-selection, on folders, and on remote / WSL / container workspaces.
• No runtime dependencies, no network access, no telemetry.

Install

From the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X) search for File Marks Explorer, or:

ext install T0ks1k24.file-marks-explorer

Also on Open VSX for VSCodium, Cursor and Gitpod.

Use it

Right-click a file or folder in the Explorer (or an editor tab) → Mark:

Everything is also in the Command Palette under File Marks:.

The eight presets that ship with it — 📌 TODO, ⭐ Important, 🚧 In progress, ✅ Done, 💥 Broken, 🚫 Do not touch, ❓ Question, 🗄 Archive — are only a starting point. Replace them with your own workflow through fileMarks.presets.

Lines, not just files

Select some code, right-click the line numbers → Mark Lines → Colour…:

The lines get a stripe in that colour where the numbers end, and a tick in the overview ruler so you can find them from anywhere in the file. The code itself is left alone — nothing is highlighted or recoloured:

Right-clicking a line number inside a selection marks the whole selection; right-clicking outside one marks that single line. All three are in the Command Palette too, where they work on whatever is selected.

Marks follow the text while you edit: everything below an insertion or a deletion moves with it, and a mark on a line you delete goes away with the line. Edits made outside VS Code are not seen — marks are stored by line number, not by content — so a file rewritten by another tool can end up with its stripes a few lines off.

Clearing the mark of a file leaves the lines inside it alone; they are separate work. Delete All Marks removes both.

Keybindings

One press. They act on the file open in the editor, and on the Explorer selection while the Explorer has focus.

Press the same shortcut again and the mark comes off, so Ctrl+Alt+1 is a toggle.

The shortcuts are bound to key positions ([Digit1], [KeyM]), not to the letters printed on them, so they keep working on a Ukrainian, Russian, Greek or any other non-Latin layout — where a plain alt+m binding does nothing at all, because no key on that layout produces an m.

Bind your own

fileMarks.apply takes arguments, so any mark can go on a key of your own in keybindings.json:

{
  "key": "ctrl+alt+r",
  "command": "fileMarks.apply",
  "args": { "color": "red", "badge": "💥", "description": "Broken" }
}

With no args at all the key opens the preset picker.

Settings

Change the colours to your own:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
  "fileMarks.red": "#ff0055"
}

Available ids: fileMarks.red, .orange, .yellow, .green, .teal, .blue, .purple, .pink, .grey, .white.

Good to know

A tag is 1–2 characters — one emoji counts as one, so 📌, 🇺🇦 and 🚧✅ all fit. Longer input is cut down to the first two: work becomes wo.

That is not our choice. VS Code gives the spot next to a file name exactly two characters and rejects anything longer — the badge is not truncated for you, the whole decoration is thrown away and the file loses its colour as well. Use the hover note for anything that needs words.

Git colours. VS Code keeps the colour of whichever extension registered last, so File Marks re-registers itself after Git has started. If a colour still gets overridden, run File Marks: Give Marks Priority Over Git Colours. On a folder containing changed files, Git replaces the badge with a grey dot; the mark colour stays. Problem markers (errors, warnings) always win — turn them off if marks must be unconditionally visible:

"git.decorations.enabled": false,
"problems.decorations.enabled": false

The Explorer selection behind a keybinding. VS Code exposes no API for what is selected in the Explorer. The shortcuts read it through the built-in Copy Path command and put the clipboard back immediately afterwards — set fileMarks.explorerKeybindings to false and they only ever mark the file open in the editor, leaving the clipboard alone. The context menu never needs any of this.

Renames made inside VS Code carry the mark along, folders included. Changes made outside the editor do not — use File Marks: Remove Marks of Missing Files to clean up.

Backup. Export / Import Marks moves everything to another machine. Marks live in one JSON file in the extension's global storage; nothing is written into your projects.

Contributing

Bugs and ideas are welcome in the issues, pull requests just as much. Plain JavaScript, no build step: clone it, npm install, press F5. CONTRIBUTING.md has the rest — where things live, what the code expects of itself, and how a release is cut.

Licence

MIT © T0ks1k24 · Source · Changelog