A better-looking sidebar for Microsoft's Remote - SSH (required, installed automatically): your SSH hosts in colored groups, with search, recent folders and drag & drop.
Installation
Launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.
Requires Microsoft's Remote - SSH extension. It is installed automatically with this one. VSSH Remote Tree does not connect to anything itself: it is a better-looking sidebar on top of Remote - SSH.
The Remote Explorer shows every host in your SSH config as one flat list, so people end up adding fake hosts like Host -----CLIENTS----- just to split it. VSSH Remote Tree shows the same hosts in colored groups. Remote - SSH still does all the real work: the hosts come from it, the folder history is its own (the same folders the Remote Explorer lists under each host), and connecting is the usual Remote - SSH connection.
What you get
Groups with your own colors. Each group's color carries over to its hosts.
Search across hosts, groups, user@hostname and folder paths (Ctrl+F in the sidebar).
Recent folders as chips under each host: click one to open it, Ctrl+click to open it in a new window, right-click to remove it from the history.
Connected host shown in green, with a card at the top to open another window on it or close the connection.
Drag & drop: drag one or more hosts (Ctrl+click to select several) onto a group, or onto the "take it out of its group" area. Drag a group onto another to put it before that one.
Group menu (right-click or Shift+F10): rename inline (F2), pick a color, move up or down, delete.
Custom or alphabetical order: the A→Z button next to the search box, or Sort Alphabetically in the view's … menu. Alphabetical order is natural (DEV2 before DEV10). Your custom order is kept and comes back when you switch back.
Separator hosts become groups. If your config has hosts like -----STAGING-----, the extension offers to turn each one into a group and puts the hosts below it inside. The separators are then hidden from the sidebar. You can delete them from the config later, or keep them.
Synced everywhere: groups and settings follow Settings Sync, so every machine you sign in to shows the same tree. A machine whose SSH config lacks some of the hosts just doesn't show them.
Follows your theme: colors come from the active VS Code theme, light or dark.
The extension only reads your SSH config and never writes to it. Groups live in VS Code, not in the config file.
Settings
Setting
Default
vsshGroups.sortOrder
custom
custom: groups in your order, hosts in SSH config order. alphabetical: both by name.
vsshGroups.separatorPattern
^[-=_*#~.]{3,}(.*?)[-=_*#~.]{3,}$
Regular expression that recognizes separator hosts. The first capture group is the group name. Leave it empty to turn the feature off.
The SSH config file is the one set in remote.SSH.configFile, exactly like Remote - SSH.
