Visibility in Explorer

Show, hide, and spot excluded files and folders — without ever leaving the Explorer.

files.exclude keeps your Explorer clean — until you actually need one of the files it hides. This extension adds a single toggle to the Explorer title bar so you can reveal everything, do your work, then tuck it all away again.

• One-click toggle — reveal or hide excluded items instantly.
• Visual cues — badges and faded colors show what is normally hidden.
• Right-click to hide — edit files.exclude straight from the context menu.
• Zero config — works out of the box with your existing workspace settings.

Features

Show or hide excluded files and folders

Click the eye icon in the Explorer title bar to instantly show or hide the items normally hidden by your files.exclude setting.

The same action is also available from the Explorer view's More Actions (...) menu, so it still works even when the title bar icon isn't visible.

Spot hidden items at a glance

While hidden items are shown, each one gets a badge:

Hidden items are also faded, so they never get confused with the rest of your project. Both cues can be turned off independently — see Settings.

Hide or unhide from the context menu

Right-click any item in the Explorer and use Hide / Unhide to add or remove it from files.exclude without leaving the Explorer.

Unhide is disabled for items hidden by a matching pattern rule, since removing the rule would affect every item it matches.

Commands

Available from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P):

Show and Hide only appear when they apply, so the palette never offers the state you are already in.

Settings

Badges require explorer.decorations.badges to be enabled, and colors require explorer.decorations.colors.

Under the hood

Nothing is hidden behind your back: the extension drives the very same files.exclude setting VS Code already uses.

Showing saves the effective excludes — user, workspace and folder scopes combined — then flips every pattern to false in the workspace scope. Your patterns stay exactly where they are, they are just switched off, so the Explorer lists the files again.

Hiding puts the saved values back and drops anything already provided by VS Code's defaults or your user settings, so no redundant entry piles up in your workspace file. When nothing workspace-specific remains, the files.exclude key is removed altogether — a .code-workspace file is rewritten with a JSONC-aware editor, so comments and formatting survive. The saved state lives per workspace, and deactivating the extension restores your settings if you left hidden items visible.

Badges and colors come from a file decoration provider that answers per resource as the Explorer paints rows, so nothing is precomputed for files you never scroll to.

Commands come in two flavors: the palette ones above, and dedicated ids for the Explorer surfaces — showFromMenu / hideFromMenu for the title bar and More Actions (...) menu, excludeFile / excludeFolder and unexcludeFile / unexcludeFolder for the context menu. The latter act on the item they are invoked on, so they are kept out of the palette.

Installation

Search for Visibility in Explorer in the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X), or run:

ext install oub.toggle-visibility-in-explorer

Feedback

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.

License

MIT © Olivier Cuenot