Pasteboard
Pasteboard is a compact, typing-first note surface for VS Code. It opens from a right-aligned Status Bar item, keeps your current draft in focus, and saves automatically while you type.
What you’ll see
- A tiny $(clipboard) icon-only Status Bar item in the bottom-right corner — hover it for a tooltip, click to toggle.
- A compact editor with a subtle, theme-aware border.
- Search and saved-note history at the bottom of the view.
- Inline SVG toolbar buttons for autosave, new note, pin, duplicate, save, and panel toggle.
- Hover-reveal delete controls for each saved item, with a few-seconds "Undo" toast after deleting.
- Tab pills show a live item count per workspace/GLOBAL scope.
Placement behavior
Pasteboard prefers a compact right-side experience, but VS Code does not expose a reliable API to force an exact pixel width or a specific side for every view.
The extension uses the following behavior:
- The primary experience is a sidebar WebviewView, which is narrow and compact by default.
- When the view is opened from the Status Bar, it tries to reveal the built-in view container and keep the experience compact.
- If the user prefers the fallback panel experience, the extension opens a compact WebviewPanel beside the editor and nudges the layout smaller using the built-in view-size commands.
- The last chosen placement is remembered in global state and reused on the next toggle.
If you prefer Right Sidebar placement, right-click the Pasteboard view title and choose Move View → Right. Pasteboard will remember that placement on future toggles.
Quick capture
Beyond typing directly into the editor, there are three fast ways to get things into Pasteboard:
- Add Selection to Pasteboard — select text in any editor, then run the command (or right-click → "Add Selection to Pasteboard"). The new item is titled with the file and line range and saved immediately to the tab matching that file's workspace folder, without stealing focus from your editor. A quick notification with a "Show" button confirms the capture.
- New Item from Clipboard — creates a draft pre-filled with your clipboard's current text, ready to review/edit before it's saved.
- Quick Open Item (Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + O) — a searchable Quick Pick across every tab, including GLOBAL. Scales much better than scrolling the in-panel list once you have a lot of saved items.
Commands
- Pasteboard: Toggle from Status Bar
- Pasteboard: Toggle Panel
- Pasteboard: New Item
- Pasteboard: Save Item
- Pasteboard: Delete Item
- Pasteboard: Open Global Tab
- Pasteboard: Set Default Placement
- Pasteboard: Add Selection to Pasteboard
- Pasteboard: New Item from Clipboard
- Pasteboard: Quick Open Item
- Pasteboard: Export Current Tab to Markdown — opens an unsaved Markdown document with every item in the active tab; use "Save As" to keep it.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + P — Toggle Pasteboard
- Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + N — New item while Pasteboard is focused
- Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + S — Save item while Pasteboard is focused
- Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + Shift + P — Add the current editor selection to Pasteboard
- Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + O — Quick Open a saved item from any tab
- Delete or Backspace while a list item is focused — Delete that item (offers Undo)
Settings
- pasteboard.autosave (default: true)
- pasteboard.autosaveDelay (default: 1000, clamped to 250-10000ms)
- pasteboard.confirmDelete (default: true)
- pasteboard.maxItems (default: 200)
- pasteboard.editorBorder (default: "1px")
- pasteboard.preferredWidthPercent (default: 28)
- pasteboard.sidebarMode (default: "view")
- pasteboard.openPanelOnStartup (default: false)
- pasteboard.storageMode (default: "state", or "file" for cross-IDE persistence)
Example:
{
"pasteboard.autosave": true,
"pasteboard.autosaveDelay": 1000,
"pasteboard.confirmDelete": true,
"pasteboard.maxItems": 200,
"pasteboard.editorBorder": "1px",
"pasteboard.preferredWidthPercent": 28,
"pasteboard.sidebarMode": "view",
"pasteboard.storageMode": "state"
}
Storage and migrations
- Global notes are stored in global state under pasteboard.global — this is always cross-workspace, regardless of storageMode.
- Workspace notes are stored per workspace folder in workspace state by default (pasteboard.storageMode: "state").
- Set pasteboard.storageMode to "file" to instead persist each workspace folder's notes to a
.vscode/pasteboard.json file in that folder. This lets the same notes show up when the folder is opened in a different editor window or a different IDE. The extension watches that file and refreshes the view if it changes on disk (e.g. edited by another window). Commit the file if you want the team to share notes, or gitignore it to keep them local.
- Legacy keys such as workspace-notepad and workspace-notepad.notes are migrated on activation.
- Items are pruned to the configured max item count, preserving pinned items first. A notification appears whenever pruning actually removes something, so old notes never disappear silently.
Build and run
npm install
npm run compile
Press F5 to start the Extension Development Host. Click the $(clipboard) icon in the Status Bar to try it.
To package an extension bundle:
npm run package
Project layout
- src/extension.ts — activation, Status Bar item, commands, and placement handling.
- src/pasteboardProvider.ts — shared webview view and panel controller.
- src/pasteboardPanel.ts — compact fallback WebviewPanel wrapper.
- src/storage.ts — persistence, pruning, and migration helpers.
- src/types.ts — message contracts between the webview and extension host.
- src/webview.ts — client-side editor, autosave, and list UI.
- assets/webview.css — layout styling and toolbar/list behavior.
