Flattered

👋 A minimal VS Code extension that makes your editor look flat, tidy, and minimal.
If you’ve ever liked a theme but wished for a cleaner, flatter version — Flattered has you covered.

⚠︎ ️Important Warnings ⚠︎

1. This extension touches your workbench.colorCustomizations

Flattered works by applying overrides to VS Code’s workbench.colorCustomizations setting.

• If you have custom tweaks or commented-out properties in this section of the settings, they may be lost.
• Please back up your settings before installing Flattered.

If you don’t mess with workbench.customizations, you’re safe to ignore this.

2. Themes may look "weird" with Flattered enabled

When Flattered is active, previewing out other themes might not look as expected because overrides are still applied. To see a theme in its original form, use the Reset Current Theme command to remove overrides first. Unfortunately at the time of publish, there isn't a VS Code API event to automate this. Hopefully in the future.

Features

• Apply a flat and minimal style on top of any theme.
• Works with your favorite color themes without replacing them.
• Toggle and reset easily from the command palette.

Preview

Before Flattered

After Flattered

After more minimal customizations

Requirements

No additional dependencies — just VS Code.

Extension Settings

This extension contributes the following setting:

• flattered.enabled Enable Flattered.
• flattered.autoApply Enable automatic apply Flattered on theme change, workbench.colorCustomizations, or Flatter setting change.
• flattered.customColor Custom color (hex) to use. Leave blank to use editor background color.
• flattered.applyTo.titleBar Apply Flattered color to title bar
• flattered.applyTo.tabs Apply Flattered color to editor tabs
• flattered.applyTo.activityBar Apply Flattered color to activity bar"
• flattered.applyTo.sideBar Apply Flattered color to sidebar
• flattered.applyTo.panel Apply Flattered color to bottom panel
• flattered.applyTo.terminal Apply Flattered color to integrated terminal
• flattered.applyTo.statusBar Apply Flattered color to status bar
• flattered.applyTo.borders Also apply on related borders
• flattered.backupColorCustomizations This isn't a setting per se, but a storage of previous workbench color customizations that Flattered have overriden, used later when Reset Current Theme command is invoked.

Commands

• To manually apply Flattered to your current theme: Flattered: Apply to Current Theme
• To reset Flattered at any time, via the Command Palette:
  Flattered: Reset Current Theme

Known Issues

• Manual user's overrides in workbench.colorCustomizations may get wiped out once overrides are applied.

Release Notes

1.0.0

• Initial release of Flattered 🎉
• Adds flat overrides to your current theme.
• Includes reset command for safely reverting changes.

For An Even More Minimal Look (bias)

• Hide the Activity Bar, much faster to use keyboard shortcuts "workbench.activityBar.location": "hidden"
• Hide the Command Center, there's already the command pallete "window.commandCenter": false
• Hide the Tab Bar, much faster to use ctrl+tab "workbench.editor.showTabs": "none"
• Hide the Bread Crumbs, much faster to use cmd+o to go to identifiers "breadcrumbs.enabled": false
• Show line numbers at intervals instead of each line, less distraction, ctrl+G to go to specific line "editor.lineNumbers": "interval"
• Play around find fonts, ligatures and alt sets, and line heights, for better readability. My gotos are
  • LigaSrc Pro
  • Red Hat Mono (I ligaturized one)
  • Consolas
  • Cascadia
  • Jet Brains Mono
  • Fira Code
  • Ligconsolata
  • Anonymous Pro
  • "editor.letterSpacing": -0.1
  • "editor.fontSize": 13
  • "editor.lineHeight": 1.8

I hope you enjoy a flatter VS Code!

-Wil, wagulo at gmail