Explorer Focus Presets

A VSCode extension that toggles named file-visibility presets (e.g. ALL / SETUP / CORE) to cut Explorer cognitive overload.

Click the status bar item 👁 CORE to cycle to the next preset. Each preset is just a files.exclude glob map, so you get the native VSCode hiding behaviour.

Usage

• Status bar: click $(eye) <preset> to cycle.
• Right-click a file/folder → Focus Mode: Toggle in presets… — single quickpick, tick the presets that should hide the path. Writes the workspace-relative path as-is; edit globs in the rc file / settings if you want **/… patterns.
• Command palette:
  • Focus Mode: Cycle Preset
  • Focus Mode: Switch Preset... (quick pick)
  • Focus Mode: Edit Presets (jumps into settings.json)
  • Focus Mode: Create .focusmoderc.json (scaffolds the rc file from extension defaults)
  • Focus Mode: Reset Presets to Defaults (wipes workspace overrides + restores files.exclude)

Bind any of these to keys via keybindings.json.

Mental model

Only two presets are meant to be edited: SETUP (everyday — hide generated dirs, lockfiles, etc.) and CORE (deep focus — hide config files too). ALL is built in — it always shows everything and can't be edited.

CORE extends SETUP by default, so anything hidden by SETUP is also hidden by CORE — you only list the extra globs in CORE. Change inheritance via focusMode.extends (or the extends key in the rc file). Set to {} or { "CORE": "" } to make presets fully independent.

Configuration

Two ways to configure, pick whichever you prefer:

Option 1 — .focusmoderc.json at the workspace root (recommended)

A plain JSON file, checked into git alongside your code. When present, it's the authoritative source — Edit Presets, Toggle, and Reset all operate on this file.

// .focusmoderc.json
{
  "presets": {
    "SETUP": {
      "**/node_modules": true,
      "**/.turbo": true,
      "**/.next": true
    },
    "CORE": {
      "**/node_modules": true,
      "**/.turbo": true,
      "turbo.json": true,
      "package.json": true,
      "eslint.config.*": true
    }
  },
  "order": ["ALL", "SETUP", "CORE"],
  "default": "ALL"
}

A bare preset map (no presets/order/default wrapper) is also accepted — the file is treated as the preset map directly.

Option 2 — VSCode settings

// .vscode/settings.json or user settings
{
  "focusMode.presets": {
    "SETUP": { "**/node_modules": true },
    "CORE":  { "**/node_modules": true, "turbo.json": true }
  },
  "focusMode.order": ["ALL", "SETUP", "CORE"],
  "focusMode.default": "ALL"
}

Precedence

.focusmoderc.json > workspace settings > global user settings > contributed defaults. Per-key merge, closest wins.

Workspace-level presets are merged on top of global user-settings presets (workspace wins per-key), so you can keep a shared global preset and still override per-project.

Your pre-existing workspace files.exclude entries are preserved — the extension snapshots them on first activation and re-applies them under every preset.

Develop

npm install
npm run compile
# then F5 in VSCode → Extension Development Host

Package a .vsix:

npm run package

Publish to Open VSX

TODO: add a icon.png (128×128) and reference it with "icon": "icon.png" in package.json before publishing for a non-empty listing page.

1. Sign in at https://open-vsx.org with GitHub.
2. User Settings → Access Tokens → generate a token with publish scope.
3. Claim the gabrielbacha namespace (self-serve if the name is free, or request via the Eclipse issue tracker).
4. Store the token locally (already done for this repo via .env.local → OVSX_PAT=…; the file is gitignored).
5. Publish:

   export $(grep -v '^#' .env.local | xargs)   # load OVSX_PAT into shell
   npm run compile
   npx vsce package
   npx ovsx publish explorer-focus-presets-<version>.vsix -p "$OVSX_PAT"
   

6. Listing appears at https://open-vsx.org/extension/gabrielbacha/explorer-focus-presets within ~1 minute.

To publish updates: bump version in package.json, recompile, rerun vsce package + ovsx publish.