Android & Flutter Resource Cleaner — VS Code Extension

Detects unused drawables, strings, layouts, colors, and Flutter assets in a project, shows potential storage savings, and lets you clean them up with one click.

How it works

• Android detection: scans every res/ directory in the project, indexes file-based resources (drawables, mipmaps, layouts, menus, anims, raw, fonts) and value-based resources declared inside res/values/*.xml (strings, colors, dimens, styles). It then searches all .kt, .java, and .xml source for R.<type>.<name> and @<type>/<name> references. Anything with zero references is flagged as unused.
• Flutter detection: parses pubspec.yaml for declared assets: and fonts: entries (including whole-folder references), then searches all .dart source for the exact asset path string. Anything unreferenced is flagged.
• Confidence levels: high (file-based resource, zero references anywhere), medium (value-type resource — could theoretically be referenced indirectly via a style/theme chain we don't fully resolve), low (the codebase uses dynamic construction like getIdentifier() or Dart string interpolation near a matching path, so we can't be statically certain). Low-confidence items are never default-checked.

Setup

cd vscode-extension
npm install
npm run compile

Running it in the Extension Development Host (for testing without publishing)

1. Open the vscode-extension folder in VS Code.
2. Press F5 (or Run → Start Debugging). This launches a second VS Code window ("Extension Development Host") with the extension loaded.
3. In that new window, open any Android or Flutter project folder.
4. Run the command "Resource Cleaner: Scan Project" from the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P), or right-click a folder in the Explorer.
5. Click Scan Project in the panel, review the grouped checklist, then click Clean Selected.

Packaging as a real, installable .vsix

npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package

This produces a resource-cleaner-0.1.0.vsix file. Install it in any VS Code (or Android Studio, if you later build the IntelliJ port — see below) via:

code --install-extension resource-cleaner-0.1.0.vsix

or through the Extensions panel's "Install from VSIX…" option.

Safety design choices worth knowing about

• File-based resources (drawables, layouts, Flutter assets) are deleted via vscode.workspace.fs.delete with useTrash: true — they go to your OS trash/recycle bin, not a permanent unlink, so they're recoverable if something was a false positive.
• Value-type resources (a <string> entry inside strings.xml, for example) can't be "trashed" individually since they're one node inside a shared file. Removing them means parsing the XML, dropping the matching node, and rewriting the file. This is not trash-recoverable the same way — the confirmation dialog says so explicitly, and recommends having a clean git working tree before cleaning these.
• Low-confidence items (dynamic lookups, string-interpolated paths) are listed but unchecked by default. You have to deliberately opt in to deleting those.

Project structure

vscode-extension/
├── src/
│   ├── reportSchema.ts     # Shared types for the unused-resource report
│   ├── fsUtils.ts          # Directory walking, byte formatting, etc.
│   ├── androidDetector.ts  # Android res/ scanning + reference search
│   ├── flutterDetector.ts  # pubspec.yaml asset scanning + reference search
│   ├── scanner.ts          # Orchestrates both detectors into one grouped report
│   ├── cleaner.ts          # Performs the actual delete / XML rewrite
│   ├── panel.ts            # Webview panel controller (extension host side)
│   └── extension.ts        # Command registration / activation
└── media/
    ├── main.js              # Webview UI logic (runs inside the webview, not Node)
    ├── main.css
    └── icon.svg

Known limitations (be upfront with users about these)

• Dynamic resource construction (getIdentifier() in Android, string interpolation in Dart) can't be perfectly resolved statically — those cases are flagged low-confidence rather than silently treated as either used or unused.
• Resources referenced only from Gradle/build config, or from other modules not scanned (e.g. a separate library module outside the project root passed to the scanner), can produce false positives. Scan from the actual top-level project root.
• The XML rewrite for value-type resources reformats the whole file (via a parse + rebuild), so unrelated formatting/whitespace may shift even though content is preserved.

Next steps (not built yet)

• IntelliJ/Android Studio plugin sharing this same detection logic (ported to Kotlin) and reusing this same JSON report schema + webview HTML/CSS, per the architecture discussed.
• Optional: flutter_gen strongly-typed asset detection, .arb localization key usage detection, unused Dart class/widget detection.