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.

Marked folders in the Explorer

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:


Quick Preset…	colour + tag + note in one click — TODO, Important, Broken…
Colour…	10 colours, themeable
Tag / Badge…	1–2 characters or an emoji next to the name
Description…	note shown on hover
Remove	clear the mark
List All Marks	jump to any marked file

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.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
`fileMarks.presets`	8 presets	the ready-made marks in Quick Preset… — replace them with your own
`fileMarks.badgeSuggestions`	`[]`	the tags offered in the picker; empty keeps the built-in emoji
`fileMarks.propagateToParents`	`false`	colour a folder when something inside it is marked
`fileMarks.showTagInTooltip`	`true`	put the tag in front of the note in the hover text
`fileMarks.priorityOverGit`	`true`	keep mark colours in front of git status colours

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

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. The extension is plain JavaScript with no build step: clone it, press F5, and a second VS Code window opens with it loaded.

npm install
npm run check      # syntax check
npm run package    # build file-marks-explorer.vsix

Pushing a commit to main with a new version in package.json tags it and publishes the release automatically — see .github/workflows/release.yml.

File Marks Explorer

T0ks1k24

File Marks Explorer

Why

Install

Use it

Settings

Good to know

Contributing

Licence