Branch PR Viewer
Browse your local branches, newest first, and review each one's changed files exactly like a GitHub Pull Request "Files changed" view — without a remote, a PR, or the command line.
Built on VS Code's native APIs with zero runtime dependencies. It reads git through the built-in Git extension and the git CLI; nothing is checked out and no temp files are written.
How it works
- Open the Branch PR Viewer view from the Activity Bar. It lists every local branch, newest commit first, with its relative age and
+added -deleted counts vs the base.
- Expand a branch to see the files that differ from the base, using three-dot / merge-base semantics (
git diff base...branch) — the same diff GitHub shows for a PR. Commits that landed on the base after the branch diverged are excluded.
- Click a file to open VS Code's native diff editor — the base version on the left, the branch version on the right.
Files are badged A / M / D / R (added, modified, deleted, renamed) just like the Source Control view.
Current Branch Changes
The second Activity Bar view, Current Branch Changes, skips the branch list and shows just the checked-out branch's changes against its base — the closest thing to GitHub's PR review pane.
- The scope is merge base → working tree: committed work plus anything uncommitted, including new untracked files.
- Clicking a file opens the diff with the merge-base version on the left and the file on disk on the right — editable, so you can fix things while reviewing and save straight into the working tree.
- The tree updates itself as you commit, check out branches or edit files.
Diff highlight style
The Toggle Diff Highlight Style button in either view title switches branchPrViewer.diffStyle between:
theme (default) — diff colours come from your colour theme, with full line and word backgrounds.gutter — the diff line backgrounds go transparent and changed lines get a thin green/red stripe in the gutter beside the line numbers, so the code itself stays on the normal editor background.
Diff highlighting is a workbench colour, not a per-editor one, so switching it off works by writing the diff colour IDs into your user workbench.colorCustomizations. Two consequences:
- Turning the backgrounds off applies to every diff editor (Source Control, other extensions), while the stripes are editor decorations and appear only in diffs opened from this extension.
- A theme-scoped block such as
"[Default Dark Modern]": { … } in your settings will override the transparent colours.
Stripes come from git diff -U0, so a line you have just typed is striped once the file is saved.
Base branch
By default the base is detected automatically: main, falling back to master. Set a specific base with the Select Base Branch… button in the view title, or via the branchPrViewer.baseBranch setting.
Multi-root workspaces
Open several repositories at once (e.g. a monorepo split, or api + web side by side) and each git repository gets its own section. With a single repository, the repo level is dropped and branches sit at the top.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
branchPrViewer.baseBranch |
"" |
Branch to compare against with three-dot (merge-base) diff. When empty, the base is auto-detected: main, then master. |
branchPrViewer.diffStyle |
"theme" |
theme leaves diff colours to the theme; gutter hides line backgrounds and marks changes in the gutter. |
Commands
| Command |
Description |
| Branch PR Viewer: Refresh |
Reload branches and diffs (title-bar refresh icon). |
| Branch PR Viewer: Select Base Branch… |
Pick the base branch to compare against. |
| Branch PR Viewer: Open File |
Open the file itself (hover a file row) instead of its diff. |
| Branch PR Viewer: Toggle Diff Highlight Style |
Switch between theme diff colours and green/red gutter marks. |
Notes
- Local branches only (
refs/heads) — remotes are not listed.
- Comparisons use immutable commit SHAs, so the diff editor's content is always consistent with what the tree shows.
- Binary files are listed and badged but render as empty in the text diff editor (same as any text diff tool).
License
MIT
