Multi-Highlight for VS Code

Multi-Highlight is a Visual Studio Code extension for highlighting multiple words with different and customisable colours. It's designed to help keep track of multiple variables while auditing or understanding code.

Installation

Install through the Visual Studio Code Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=chrisjdavies.multi-highlight

Example

See the following screenshot in which I've highlighted three different words to help clarify their use in the function being analysed:

Commands

Multi-Highlight adds the following commands to the command palette:

• Multi-Highlight: Add Highlight
• Multi-Highlight: Remove Highlight
• Multi-Highlight: Clear Highlights
• Multi-Highlight: Fresh Highlight
• Multi-Highlight: Toggle Highlight

Add, Remove and Toggle operate on the word currently under the cursor.

Configuration

To configure the highlight colours, edit the multi-highlight.colours string. This is a comma-separated list of background/foreground pairs.

The default list of colours is:

• yellow:black
• blue:white
• red:white
• green:white
• purple:white
• orange:white

Colours can be specified by name or using HTML syntax: #d0d0d0.

Key Bindings

Multi-Highlight doesn't come with default key bindings, but I personally use the following in my settings.json with VSCodeVim to mimic vim-highlighter:

{
    "vim.normalModeKeyBindings": [
        {
            "before": ["g", "<cr>"],
            "commands": ["multi-highlight.addHighlight"]
        },
        {
            "before": ["g", "<bs>"],
            "commands": ["multi-highlight.removeHighlight"]
        },
        {
            "before": ["g", "<C-l>"],
            "commands": ["multi-highlight.clearHighlights"]
        },
        {
            "before": ["g", "<space>"],
            "commands": ["multi-highlight.freshHighlight"]
        }
    ]
}

Thanks

• Thanks to chasonyu for implementing the Toggle Highlight feature.
• Thanks to vim-highlighter for the inspiration. I use this a lot in vim.
• Thanks to DALL-E 3 for generating the icon/logo.