Removes single-line and multi-line comments from your code — for basically
any language — without touching strings, URLs, or actual code that happens
to contain //, #, <!--, etc.
What it handles
- Line comments:
//, #, --, ;, ' (VB), depending on language
- Block comments:
/* ... */, <!-- ... -->, <# ... #>, =begin/=end, --[[ ]]
- 30+ languages out of the box: JS/TS/JSX/TSX, Python, Java, C/C++/C#, Go,
Rust, PHP, Ruby, HTML/XML, CSS/SCSS/LESS, Markdown, YAML, Shell,
PowerShell, SQL, Lua, Dockerfile, Makefile, Vue, and more.
- Unrecognized file types fall back to
// + /* */ (the most common style).
What it will NOT touch
- Anything inside string literals (
"...", '...', `...`), even if
it contains //, #, or other comment-like text.
- A leading shebang line (
#!/usr/bin/env node) is always preserved.
- Actual code — only the comment text and comment-only lines are removed.
Installation (no publishing required)
Unzip the extension folder somewhere permanent, e.g. ~/comment-sweep.
Open a terminal in that folder and run:
npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package
This produces comment-sweep-1.0.0.vsix.
In VS Code: open the Extensions panel → click the ... menu (top right)
→ Install from VSIX... → select the .vsix file you just built.
(Alternatively, skip packaging entirely: copy the whole comment-sweep
folder into your VS Code extensions directory —
~/.vscode/extensions/ on macOS/Linux, %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions\
on Windows — then restart VS Code.)
Usage
- Open any file in VS Code.
- Run Comment Sweep: Remove Comments from File from the Command
Palette (
Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P), or right-click in the editor
and pick it from the context menu.
- To clean only part of a file: select the text first, then run
Comment Sweep: Remove Comments from Selection the same way.
Undo (Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z) works as normal if you want the comments back.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Command |
Windows/Linux |
macOS |
| Remove Comments from File |
Ctrl+Alt+C |
Cmd+Alt+C |
| Remove Comments from Selection |
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C |
Cmd+Alt+Shift+C |
To change these: Command Palette → Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts
→ search "Comment Sweep" → click the pencil icon next to a command.
Known limitations
- Regex literals in JS/TS that contain
// inside them (e.g. /a\/\/b/)
aren't specially detected — this is a rare edge case; check code with
inline regex after running.
- JSON files are left untouched (standard JSON has no comment syntax);
.jsonc files are supported.
- Python/Ruby "block comments" via triple-quoted strings are treated as
strings (correctly) — only
#/=begin/=end style comments are removed.
License
MIT
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