You download a file. You want it in your project as an asset or a bit of documentation.
Today that means either dragging it from Finder across monitors into exactly the right folder in
the Explorer tree — one hand holding the drag, the other swiping desktops — or typing
mv ~/Downloads/dahguegdwqueg63gjdhavdj.jpg ./src/assets/ into a terminal.
Copying in Finder and pressing ⌘V in the Explorer does not work: VS Code's Explorer
paste only knows about files copied inside VS Code
(microsoft/vscode#41854, open since 2018).
Drop In fixes that.
What it does
1. Add Files Here…
Right-click any folder in the Explorer — including the project root — and choose
Add Files Here…. Your system's file dialog opens at ~/Downloads. Select as many files and
folders as you like, hit Open, and they are copied in.
2. Paste Copied Files Here
Select files in Finder (or File Explorer, or Nautilus), press ⌘C, then either:
- right-click a folder in the Explorer and choose Paste Copied Files Here, or
- click a folder in the Explorer and just press ⌘V.
When the system clipboard holds no files, ⌘V does exactly what it always did, so
nothing you rely on changes.
Good to know
- It copies. It never moves. Your original download stays in
~/Downloads — nothing is
deleted or modified.
- Name clashes ask first. Keep both (Finder-style
photo 2.jpg), Replace, or Skip — with an
"apply to all" for big batches. Configurable if you'd rather it never asked.
- Folders come with their contents, recursively.
- Right-clicking a file targets the folder that file is in, which is usually what you meant.
- One failure doesn't sink the batch. Nine of ten files still land, and the tenth is reported.
- It refuses to copy a folder into itself or into one of its own subfolders.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
What it does |
dropIn.overrideExplorerPaste |
true |
Let ⌘V / Ctrl+V in the Explorer paste files from the OS clipboard. Turn off to leave the key binding entirely alone. |
dropIn.defaultPickerLocation |
~/Downloads |
Where Add Files Here… opens. Set to "" to reopen wherever you were last. |
dropIn.onConflict |
prompt |
prompt, keepBoth, overwrite, or skip. |
dropIn.confirmBeforeCopy |
false |
Show a confirmation listing what will be copied, and where. |
|
Add Files Here… |
Paste Copied Files Here |
| macOS |
✅ |
✅ via NSPasteboard |
| Windows |
✅ |
✅ via Get-Clipboard -Format FileDropList |
| Linux |
✅ |
✅ needs wl-clipboard (Wayland) or xclip (X11) |
Reading files off the system clipboard needs a platform-specific helper, because VS Code's
extension API exposes clipboard text only. Drop In shells out to osascript, powershell.exe,
or wl-paste/xclip — no native modules, nothing to compile, no extra permissions.
Known limitations
- Remote workspaces (SSH, WSL, Dev Containers, Codespaces): the OS clipboard lives on your
local machine while the project lives on the remote, so Paste Copied Files Here is not
reliable there. Add Files Here… works, browsing the remote filesystem.
- Linux needs
wl-clipboard or xclip installed; Drop In says so plainly if neither is there.
- ⌘V briefly borrows the system clipboard to work out which Explorer folder has focus
(VS Code exposes no API for the Explorer's selection) and puts it back afterwards. The
context-menu command doesn't need to do this.
Contributing
Bug reports and PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
MIT © Anthony Morris
