Omni-FS

One file system client for S3, FTP, FTPS, SFTP and WebDAV — inside VS Code.

Open a remote file, edit it, press Ctrl+S. That's it. No download, no re-upload, no separate window.

Pre-release. Every protocol listed below works, but Omni-FS is pre-1.0 and still has gaps — read Status and the changelog before installing.

Install

• VS Code Marketplace — search for Omni-FS in the Extensions view, or open its page.
• Open VSX — for VSCodium, Cursor, Gitpod and other editors that use it: open-vsx.org/extension/ryftcore/omni-fs-vscode.
• A .vsix file — download one from GitHub Releases and run Extensions: Install from VSIX….

Releases are pre-releases for now, so on the Marketplace choose Switch to Pre-Release Version if it offers you nothing to install.

What it does

• Remote files are real files. Omni-FS registers an omnifs:// file system, so remote files open in normal editors, save normally, and work with search, quick-open and diff. Add a bucket to your workspace and it behaves like a folder.
• A connections sidebar for status, connect/disconnect, credentials, and browsing a server you haven't mounted.
• A transfers view with progress, automatic retry on transient failures, and cancellation.
• Protocol-aware behaviour. Each backend declares what it can genuinely do, and Omni-FS adapts instead of failing after you click. S3 has no real directories, so a new folder appears once it holds a file. An FTP connection carries one operation at a time, so bulk work serialises there — unless you allow it more connections — while S3 runs sixteen transfers in parallel. You don't have to think about any of it.
• Colour-tagged connections, so production is hard to mistake for staging. The colour follows the connection's files into the Explorer and editor tabs.
• Read-only connections, switched from the tree's context menu and applied to the next write without reconnecting.

Status

Each protocol passes the same conformance suite against a real server of its kind in CI.

The Download… and Upload… commands are not wired up yet. Everything else listed above works against every protocol.

Getting started

1. Open the Omni-FS view in the Activity Bar.
2. Click Add Connection and pick a protocol.
3. Fill in the settings, then the credentials.
4. Click Connect.

To work in a remote folder as if it were local, right-click the connection and choose Open as Workspace Folder. The sidebar then marks it in workspace, and the same menu offers Remove from Workspace instead.

Disconnect takes the folder out of the workspace as well: while it is there, VS Code reads from it whenever it likes, and each read would connect again. A connection closed for being idle stays in the workspace and reconnects when you next use it.

VS Code restarts extensions, closing every open connection, whenever the first folder in the workspace changes. In a window with no folder open yet, that includes opening a connection there, and later disconnecting it or removing it from the workspace. Open a local folder first to keep remote ones out of that position.

Connecting to S3-compatible storage

Leave Endpoint empty for AWS. For anything else, set it and turn on Force path-style addressing, which most self-hosted servers require:

Root prefix scopes a connection to a subfolder of the bucket, which is handy for keeping a production connection pointed at exactly one deploy directory.

Connecting over FTP / FTPS

Pick the Encryption that matches the server:

• Minimum TLS version is Automatic by default. Choose TLS 1.0 or 1.1 only to reach an old server that offers nothing newer — it also relaxes the cipher policy those servers need.
• Allow self-signed certificates turns off certificate verification. Use it only for a server you control.
• Maximum connections defaults to 1. FTP carries one command per connection, so with one, browsing waits behind a transfer. Raising it (up to 8) opens more logins so they run side by side. If the server refuses the extra logins, Omni-FS drops back to the number it accepted instead of failing.
• Root prefix scopes the connection to a subfolder of the login directory, or to an absolute server path if it begins with /.

Listings use MLSD/MLST where the server offers them, for exact sizes and timestamps, and fall back to parsing LIST where it does not. Rename and delete work on directories too, and a recursive delete walks the tree for you.

Your credentials

Credentials go to your operating system's keychain — Keychain on macOS, DPAPI on Windows, libsecret on Linux — through VS Code's secret storage. They are never written to a settings file.

Connection settings (endpoint, bucket, host, username) live in the omniFs.connections setting, which contains no secrets and is safe to commit to .vscode/settings.json and share with your team. Each person supplies their own credentials on first connect.

Settings

Troubleshooting

Open the Omni-FS output channel, click the gear and choose Set Log Level…. The level applies at once and VS Code remembers it.

• info — connects, disconnects and why (idle, edited, lost), and for FTP the server greeting, negotiated TLS version and cipher.
• debug — every operation with its timing, entry or byte count, cache miss, and on failure the error code.
• trace — also cache hits and, for FTP, the raw control channel (> LIST, < 226 …). The password is written as PASS ###.

S3-compatible servers disagree with AWS about error codes, so when reporting a problem please say which server you're using. Never paste credentials or an endpoint URL containing one.

Contributing

Omni-FS is open source and built so that adding a protocol touches no existing code. The repository, architecture notes and contribution guide are at github.com/ryftcore/omni-fs.

License

MIT © ryftcore