🧱 Big Comments

Big Comments is a Visual Studio Code extension that helps you format large, padded comment blocks around selected text. It's great for making headers, section dividers, or attention-grabbing notes in your code. I made this to solve my frustration with not being able to easily create clear and consistent "header comments."

✨ Features

• ✅ Wrap selected text in a boxed comment block
• 🧠 Auto-detects comment style based on file type (e.g. //, #, --, /* */, <!-- -->)
• 🧩 Supports both single-line and block comments (HTML, CSS, Lua, etc.)
• 💬 Custom symbols + decorators (e.g. =*, #*, -$) for use with comment colouring extensions
• 📏 Auto-resizes box to fit the widest line
• ♻️ Strips existing comment symbols before re-boxing
• 🧱 "Big Box" mode: adds extra spacing and padding
• 📍 Inline mode: turn a single line into a full-width comment
• 🧷 Indent preservation: box aligns with the indentation of the first selected line
• ⚡ Fast, keyboard-first UX

🌐 Language Support

Big Comments now supports comment formatting for a wide range of languages:

If your language isn’t listed, it will fall back to //.

🔍 Examples

Single-line comment (default mode)

// =======================
// = Initialize database =
// = Run migrations      =
// =======================

Block comment mode (e.g. CSS)

/* ===================== 
   = Initialize styles = 
   = Add media queries = 
   ===================== */

Block comment mode (e.g. HTML)

<!-- ====================== 
     = Initialize content = 
     = Add footer         = 
     ====================== -->

💡 Note: For block-style comment formats (like /* */, <!-- -->, --[[ ]]), only the first and last lines use the delimiters. Inner lines are plain, padded text.

Custom input =* (decorator)

//* =======================
//* = Initialize database =
//* = Run migrations      =
//* =======================

Custom input @$ (symbol + styled comment prefix)

//$ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
//$ @ Initialize database @
//$ @ Run migrations      @
//$ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Big Box mode

// =============================
// =                           =
// =    Initialize database    =
// =    Run migrations         =
// =                           =
// =============================

⚙️ Usage

1. Select the text you want to wrap
2. Open the Command Palette: Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P
3. Run one of the following commands:

🧾 Available Commands

💡 Custom Symbol Input Format

When prompted:

Enter your desired Box Symbol and (optional) colour decorator (e.g. '=*'):

• The first character is used as the box symbol (e.g. =)
• Any following characters are used as decorator(s) added to the comment symbol (e.g. //*, //$, ##!)

Example:

🎹 Keybinding (Recommended)

You can add a custom keybinding for any bigcomments command by editing your VS Code keybindings:

1. Open Command Palette → Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)
2. Add a new entry like this:

{
  "key": "cmd+shift+b",
  "command": "bigcomments.defaultcommentboxinline",
  "when": "editorTextFocus"
}

This example binds Cmd+Shift+B to run the Inline Comment Box command whenever the editor is focused.

You can replace "cmd+shift+b" with your own preferred key combination, and change the command to any of the following:

📌 Extension Settings

Big Comments supports customizable settings in your VS Code settings.json:

To configure it:

1. Open Command Palette → Preferences: Open Settings (JSON)
2. Add your preferred symbol:

"bigcomments.defaultSymbol": "#"

This will use # as the default box symbol when wrapping comments, unless you override it manually via a custom input.

🛠 Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or later
• No external dependencies

🐞 Known Issues

• Only one comment style is supported per language
• No unbox/toggle feature yet

📦 Release Notes

0.1.3

• 🧷 Indent preservation: boxed comments now align to the indent level of the first line in the selection
• 🔧 Internal improvements to spacing and alignment logic
• 🐛 Bug fixes with multicharacter comments

0.1.1

• 🌐 Multi-language comment support: now supports single-line and block comment formats for 20+ languages
• 🧱 Block comment boxes use /* */, <!-- -->, etc. correctly (only on top and bottom lines)
• 🧠 Improved comment detection and formatting consistency
• 🔧 Small internal refactors for maintainability

0.0.3

• 🔡 Improved custom box prompt: now accepts symbol + decorator input (=*)
• ✨ Decorators are applied to the comment symbol (//*, //#, etc.)
• 🔄 Small refactor for inline mode, edge cases

0.0.2

• ➕ Added inline mode
• ➕ Added big box mode with padded layout
• 🧠 Smarter re-parsing of existing comments
• ✍️ Improved default box sizing logic

0.0.1

• Initial release
• Default + custom comment boxes
• Auto language detection (// vs #)

🧪 Future Ideas

• Toggle/unbox existing comment blocks
• ASCII banners or emoji box styles
• Global and per-language settings
• Handling multiple comment types in the same language