Lightning-fast file name search with granular directory filtering.
🚀 Why FileScout?
Ever felt Quick Open (Ctrl+P) is too fuzzy and gives you too many irrelevant results? Or that Full-Text Search (Ctrl+Shift+F) is too heavy when you just want to find a file by its name?
FileScout is designed to bridge this gap. It provides a dedicated, highly granular file-name search tool built directly into your Activity Bar. It's for power users who need exact control over where they are looking without the overhead of content searching.
✨ Key Features
🔍 Targeted File Name Search: Search exclusively by file name (e.g., package.json, *.config.js, User*) without querying file contents.
📁 Granular Filtering: Use dedicated "Files to Include" and "Files to Exclude" inputs with full glob pattern support (e.g., src/components/**).
💨 Lightning Fast: Uses an in-memory file cache for sub-second filtering, even in massive monorepos.
🧠 Search History: Quickly cycle through your recent queries using the Up and Down arrow keys in the search box.
🧩 Native UI integration: A seamless sidebar experience built with React that adopts your editor's theme colors and styling precisely.
⚡ One-Click Open: Results are displayed in a clean, hierarchical tree view. Single-click to open, keeping your focus where it belongs.
🛠️ How to Use
Activate: Open the FileScout view from the Activity Bar (look for the search icon) or use the shortcut Ctrl + Alt + F (Mac: Cmd + Alt + F).
Search: Enter your file name or pattern in the top search box.
Refine: Toggle the ... menu to specify directories to include or exclude.
Browse: Explore the result tree and click any file to open it in the editor.
⚙️ Extension Settings
This extension currently uses default search exclusion rules. Additional configurable settings are planned for future releases.
📌 Keyboard Shortcuts
Shortcut
Action
Ctrl+Alt+F
Open the FileScout Sidebar
Up Arrow
Previous search query
Down Arrow
Next search query
⌨️ Available Commands
This extension provides the following commands via the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P):
FileScout: Open FileScout – Shows the search sidebar.
FileScout: Refresh Cache – Manually triggers a re-index of the workspace.
FileScout: Collapse All – Collapses all folders in the search results tree.
📋 Requirements
VS Code version 1.85.0 or higher.
🐛 Known Issues
Large monorepos may take a moment for the initial indexing on first activation.
