Explorer Marker

Mark files and folders in the VS Code Explorer so you can keep track of what you have already reviewed and what still needs a second look.

Useful for code reviews, refactors, audits, or working through an unfamiliar codebase — anywhere you need to remember "I've checked this one, but not that one."

Features

Mark anything, from anywhere

Every file and folder can carry one of two markers:

You can apply a marker in three ways:

• Explorer — right-click a file or folder (multi-select works too).
• Editor title bar — use the ✅ / ❓ / ⊘ buttons on the open file.
• Command Palette — search for File Marker: to act on the active file.

Markers stack with Git

Badges use emoji glyphs and never recolour the filename, so a file that is both modified and marked keeps its yellow Git colour and shows your badge. Your markers add information instead of hiding Git's.

Folders mark everything inside them

Marking a folder applies the marker to everything nested inside it. Individual files can still override their folder — mark a file explicitly and it keeps its own state.

Clearing works the way you would expect: when you clear the last marked file inside a folder, the folder's marker disappears too, cascading up through parent folders. No stale badges left behind on folders whose contents are all clear.

Marked Files view

The Explorer sidebar gains a Marked Files view listing everything you have marked, grouped by marker with a count per group.

• Click an entry to open it.
• Use the inline ⊘ button to clear a single entry.
• Use the toolbar button to clear every marker in the workspace.

Settings

Use an emoji rather than a plain character. Emoji are drawn by the colour emoji font, which is what keeps the badge visible when Git also decorates the row. A plain character such as ? gets tinted by whichever decoration wins the row, and can become hard to see.

Prefer a blue question badge? ℹ️, 🔵, and 🔷 all work — Unicode has no blue question-mark emoji, so pick a blue glyph instead.

Commands

No default keybindings are registered, so nothing conflicts out of the box. To add your own, open Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts and search for File Marker.

Where markers are stored

Markers live in VS Code's workspace state, so they are per-workspace, survive reloads, and are never written into your project files or committed to Git.

Marker state is scoped to real files on disk. A file added to a folder after you cleared that folder starts unmarked rather than inheriting an old marker.

Requirements

VS Code 1.80.0 or newer. No other dependencies.

Development

npm install        # install dev dependencies
npm run compile    # build once to out/
npm run watch      # rebuild on change
npm run icon       # regenerate images/icon.png

Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.

To build and install a local package:

npx vsce package
code --install-extension explorer-marker-1.0.0.vsix --force

Known limitations

• Explorer rows show one decoration colour at a time. This extension deliberately supplies no colour so Git keeps ownership of the filename.
• Folder auto-clear scans folder contents and stops after 5000 entries. Very large folders (for example node_modules) keep their marker rather than being cleared.

License

MIT © Robertas Alseika