A VS Code extension that adds a sidebar panel for managing, grouping, and opening your projects quickly. Works with both user-defined projects and recently opened folders.
Features
- Project dashboard in the sidebar: add, edit, delete, pin and open projects in the current or a new window, or open a terminal in the project folder
- Quick Open (
Projects Dashboard: Quick Open Project in the command palette): search across projects and recent folders, then open in a window or a terminal — fully keyboard-driven, no sidebar needed
- Groups: organize projects into color-coded groups; rename, delete, and reorder them
- Drag & drop: reorder projects and groups by dragging, with theme-aware drop indicators
- Recent projects: automatically tracks folders opened outside the dashboard across all VS Code windows, merged with defined projects in the Recent tab
- Search: filter projects and recent folders by name or folder path
- Card customization: toggle last-opened/last-modified info, the current git branch, folder paths, super-compact cards, and the search bar — persisted in the extension store, shared across windows
- Project colors: each project and group can carry a color used for accents, the color themes, and the workbench customizations
Color themes
In the dashboard settings (gear icon) you can apply your project's color to the VS Code workbench. Pick any combination of:
- Title bar pop — fills the title bar with the project color
- Status bar pop — fills the status bar with the project color
- Borders — colors the borders of the title bar, sidebar, status bar, and activity bar
Text colors are computed automatically for maximum contrast (WCAG AA, 4.5:1 minimum), so the result stays readable even for extreme color values. Unchecking everything removes all customizations.
Colors are written to workbench.colorCustomizations in the workspace's .vscode/settings.json and only apply while that workspace's project color is set.
Requirements
Build and package
npm install
npm run compile # development build
npm run vsix # create the .vsix installer file (uses vsce)
Publishing
Publishing is done with the vsce CLI (installed on demand via npx, no global install needed):
npx @vscode/vsce login <publisher> # one-time: paste your marketplace PAT
npm run publish # builds and publishes the current version
The personal access token must be created at dev.azure.com with the Marketplace scope for the publisher account. The publisher name is read from the publisher field in package.json.
Data storage
Projects and settings are stored in a projects-dashboard.json file inside the extension's global storage directory (under VS Code's user-data folder). On first run after upgrading, existing data is migrated automatically from the legacy ~/.projects-dashboard.json location, which is kept as a backup.
