Lite Zen — Focus on Code, Hide Everything Else

One hotkey to hide all UI panels. One more to bring them back.

No fullscreen. No zen mode quirks. Just your editor — instantly.

Why Lite Zen?

VS Code's built-in Zen Mode does too much: it goes fullscreen, centers your layout, hides line numbers, and mutes notifications. Sometimes you just want to maximize your editor space without losing your window position or workflow context.

Lite Zen gives you a single toggle that hides all surrounding UI — sidebar, bottom panel, activity bar, status bar, and secondary sidebar — and restores them exactly as they were.

Features

• Single hotkey toggle — Cmd+K Cmd+\ (Mac) / Ctrl+K Ctrl+\ (Win/Linux)
• Hides all 5 UI components: primary sidebar, bottom panel, activity bar, status bar, auxiliary sidebar
• Remembers previous state — restores activity bar position and status bar visibility to their original values
• Per-component control — choose exactly which panels to hide/restore via settings
• No fullscreen — stays in your current window, keeps your window arrangement intact
• No side effects — no centered layout, no hidden line numbers, no muted notifications
• Workspace-scoped state — toggle state persists across VS Code restarts

Installation

From VS Code

1. Open Extensions (Cmd+Shift+X)
2. Search for Lite Zen
3. Click Install

From VSIX

git clone https://github.com/setood/lite-zen.git
cd lite-zen
npm install
npm run package
# This produces a `lite-zen-<version>.vsix` file. Install it with:
code --install-extension lite-zen-*.vsix

Usage

Or open Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P) and run Lite Zen: Toggle All Panels.

The hotkey is fully customizable — rebind them in Keyboard Shortcuts (Cmd+K Cmd+S).

Settings

All settings are under liteZen.* and can be changed in Settings UI or settings.json:

Lite Zen vs. Alternatives

Compared as of April 2026.

Support

If you find Lite Zen useful, consider supporting its development:

How It Works

Toggle Algorithm

Hide (liteZen.toggle when panels are visible):

1. Save the current state of the activity bar location and status bar visibility to workspaceState.
2. Detect whether the bottom panel is currently open (see heuristic below).
3. Close configured UI components (sidebar, panel, auxiliary bar) in parallel.
4. Set activityBar.location to "hidden" and statusBar.visible to false if configured.
5. Persist liteZen.isHidden = true in workspace state and update the when-clause context.

Show (liteZen.toggle again, or Escape):

1. Restore activity bar and status bar to their previously saved values.
2. Re-open sidebar, bottom panel, and auxiliary bar — but only the ones that were actually visible before hiding. The bottom panel is skipped if the detection determined it was closed.
3. Persist liteZen.isHidden = false.

A isToggling guard prevents race conditions from rapid double-presses of the hotkey.

Bottom Panel Detection Trick

VS Code has no API to query "is the bottom panel open?". Lite Zen uses a visible-lines heuristic:

1. Record the number of visible editor lines (editor.visibleRanges).
2. Execute workbench.action.closePanel.
3. Wait PANEL_DETECT_DELAY_MS (100 ms) for VS Code to re-layout.
4. Measure visible lines again.
5. If the difference exceeds PANEL_DIFF_THRESHOLD (2 lines), the panel was open.

The heuristic is unreliable when:

• There is no active editor or visible ranges.
• The file has fewer than MIN_VISIBLE_LINES (3) visible lines.
• The end of the file is already on screen (VS Code won't add lines by scrolling up).

Fallback — tempDocument mode: When the heuristic is unreliable and panelDetectionMethod is set to "tempDocument", the extension opens a scratch document with TEMP_DOC_LINE_COUNT (100) lines, measures before/after closing the panel, then closes the temp document and restores the original editor. In "auto" mode (default), it simply closes the panel and assumes it should be restored on show.

Constants

License

MIT