Declutter your VS Code Explorer. Hide ignored and unwanted files with one click.
What it does
Declutter reads your workspace ignore files and injects those patterns into files.exclude so the Explorer only shows you what matters. One click to hide, one click to restore — your pre-existing excludes are never touched.
Usage
Click the Declutter item in the status bar (bottom left):
State
Appearance
Meaning
Inactive
○ Declutter (dim)
Ignored files are visible
Active
● Declutter (bright)
Ignored files are hidden
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
declutter.configTarget
"workspace"
Where to write files.exclude — "workspace" (.vscode/settings.json) or "global" (user settings, no git noise)
declutter.includeNestedIgnoreFiles
false
Also scan ignore files in subdirectories, not just the workspace root
declutter.autoHideOnOpen
false
Automatically activate hiding when a workspace is opened
declutter.showNotifications
true
Show info messages when toggling visibility on or off
declutter.additionalPatterns
[]
Extra glob patterns to hide in addition to those from ignore files
On hide: reads .gitignore files (and optionally nested .gitignore files), converts patterns to VS Code glob syntax, merges with additionalPatterns, and writes them to files.exclude
On show: removes only the patterns Declutter added — any excludes you had before are left as they were
Pattern conversion rules
Pattern
VS Code glob
Notes
*.log
**/*.log
No slash — matches anywhere in tree
/dist
dist
Leading / — root-relative
node_modules/
**/node_modules
Trailing / — directory marker, matches anywhere
src/generated/
src/generated
Contains slash — path-specific
# comment
(skipped)
Comments ignored
!important.log
(skipped)
Negations have no files.exclude equivalent
For nested .gitignore files, patterns are scoped to their directory:
File
Pattern
VS Code glob
packages/alpha/.gitignore
build/
packages/alpha/**/build
out/generated/.gitignore
*.map
out/generated/**/*.map
Notes
configTarget: "workspace" writes to .vscode/settings.json — this will appear as a diff in shared repos. Use "global" to avoid that.
Negation patterns (!pattern) are silently skipped — files.exclude has no equivalent.
If you manually remove a pattern from files.exclude while Declutter is active, toggling off will skip it without error.
