Project Tiles
A lightweight tile dashboard for your projects, in its own editor tab. Available for VS Code and its forks
(Positron, Cursor, Antigravity, VSCodium) and for JetBrains IDEs (PhpStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, …),
all sharing one project list.
Features
- Tiles with name, description, logo (emoji or text, an image file, or an auto-detected
logo.png / icon.png) and colour
- Collections with colours and descriptions; drag & drop to reorder projects and collections
- Git branch and last commit per repository, plus an ahead/behind badge (↓ to pull, ↑ to push, ✓ up to date);
tiles refresh on their own after pull / commit / checkout
- Languages like on GitHub (weighted by bytes), with a manual override per project
(e.g.
C#, ShaderLab for a Unity project instead of whatever its YAML suggests)
- Add current folder in one click, with a form pre-filled from the open folder
- Search across names, descriptions, paths, languages and branches
- One
projects.json shared by every editor and live-synced between open windows
- English and Polish UI
Install
- VS Code: Visual Studio Marketplace, or search for Project Tiles in the Extensions view
- Positron, Cursor, Antigravity, VSCodium: Open VSX
- PhpStorm and other JetBrains IDEs (2025.2+): Settings | Plugins | Marketplace, search for Project Tiles
Usage
Open the dashboard from the tiles icon in the activity bar or with Project Tiles: Open Dashboard.
Click a tile to open the project in the current window; Ctrl+click (or New window) opens it in a new one.
| Command |
What it does |
Project Tiles: Open Dashboard |
Opens the dashboard tab |
Project Tiles: Add Current Folder as Project |
Adds the open folder / workspace and opens the edit form |
Project Tiles: Add Folder as Project… |
Picks a folder from disk |
Project Tiles: Refresh Git & Language Info |
Forces a metadata refresh, including git fetch |
Project Tiles: Open Data File (projects.json) |
Opens the catalog for manual editing or backup |
Tip: bind projectTiles.open to a key, e.g. Ctrl+Alt+P.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Meaning |
projectTiles.openInNewWindow |
false |
Open projects in a new window by default |
projectTiles.showOnStartup |
false |
Open the dashboard when a window starts without a folder |
projectTiles.tileSize |
normal |
normal or compact |
projectTiles.columns |
3 |
Preferred number of tile columns (fewer when the window is narrow) |
projectTiles.fetchRemote |
true |
Run git fetch before computing ahead/behind; off = compare with the last local fetch only |
projectTiles.metadataCacheMinutes |
10 |
How long git info is reused before re-checking |
projectTiles.languageCacheHours |
12 |
How long a language scan is reused before re-scanning |
projectTiles.maxFilesScanned |
15000 |
Upper bound on files inspected per project for language detection |
projectTiles.languageIgnoreDirs |
node_modules, Library, obj, … |
Directories skipped during language detection |
In JetBrains IDEs the same options are under Settings | Tools | Project Tiles.
Data and privacy
The project list and imported logos are stored in one folder shared by every editor:
| OS |
Folder |
| Windows |
%APPDATA%\project-tiles |
| macOS |
~/Library/Application Support/project-tiles |
| Linux |
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/project-tiles (default ~/.config/project-tiles) |
No telemetry, no accounts. The only network traffic is git fetch in your own repositories, when the
dashboard opens and on manual refresh (turn it off with projectTiles.fetchRemote).
How it stays light
- Activation only registers commands; nothing is scanned until the dashboard is opened.
- Git info comes from a few short
git calls per repository, only when a .git entry exists.
- Language detection is a bounded breadth-first walk (depth and file-count limits, ignore list).
- Results are cached on disk, so tiles render instantly from the last known state while fresh data streams in.
- The dashboard is plain HTML/CSS/JS, no framework.
Development
npm install
npm run watch # rebuild on change, then press F5 in VS Code
npm test # unit tests
npm run package # typecheck + tests + bundle + .vsix
The JetBrains plugin lives in jetbrains/ and reuses media/ and shared/.
src/domain – model and catalog rules (no vscode import, unit-tested)src/services – git, language detection, logo storage, metadatasrc/storage – JSON persistence and the shared data foldersrc/webview – webview panel and the typed message protocolmedia – dashboard page (also used by the JetBrains plugin)shared – UI strings and the language table, used by both editions
Support
Project Tiles is free and open source. If it saves you time, you can
buy me a coffee through GitHub Sponsors.
License
MIT © Dominik Mech
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