Workspace plugin¶
Open a folder as a workspace and browse, create, rename and delete its files from a side panel — so you can work with a whole project, not just individual files.
Where to find it¶
The File menu:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open Folder… | Pick a directory; it becomes the workspace root and the panel appears. |
| Close Folder | Closes the folder and the documents that live in it — see below. |
| Refresh Workspace Index | Re-reads the folder for Go to File now, instead of waiting for the automatic refresh. |
The last opened folder is remembered and restored on the next launch. The panel is not forced open on that restore: if you hid the dock, it stays hidden. Only an explicit Open Folder… brings it back.
Closing a folder closes its files¶
Close Folder first closes every open tab whose file lives inside the workspace, then clears the workspace. Files from outside the folder and untitled buffers are left alone.
A modified document raises the ordinary Save / Discard / Cancel prompt — nothing is closed behind your back. Pressing Cancel on any of them stops the whole operation: the folder stays open, and the tabs already closed before the cancel stay closed. Press Close Folder again when you have decided.
Go to File and the index¶
The plugin keeps the list of files behind the Command Palette's Go to File
(Ctrl+P). It is built in the background: opening a large folder — or one
on a network share — no longer blocks the editor, and the palette keeps showing
the previous folder's files until the new list is ready. The status bar says
Indexing… while it works and Indexed N files when it is done.
The index refreshes:
- automatically, about two seconds after something changes in the workspace root or in one of its immediate subfolders. Only that first level is watched — a watcher over a whole source tree would cost one operating-system handle per directory — so a change buried deeper waits for one of the other two triggers;
- when you save a file under the folder: a newly created file joins the index at once, with no re-walk at all;
- on demand, through File ▸ Refresh Workspace Index (also in the
Command Palette). Use it after a
git checkout, a build, or anything else that rearranges the tree in a way the shallow watch cannot see.
The index holds up to the limit set in Preferences ▸ Workspace — 50 000 files by default — so an enormous tree never stalls the palette. When the walk stops at that ceiling the status bar says so, rather than leaving later files quietly missing from Go to File. Raise it (up to 500 000) for a very large checkout, or lower it if indexing a folder on a slow share takes too long.
Which folders are skipped¶
Some directories are never worth indexing: version-control metadata, IDE state, build output, dependency trees. Preferences ▸ Workspace holds the list of directory names the index never looks inside — one per line, matched whole and case-sensitively, at any depth.
The defaults are .git, .svn, .hg, .vs, .vscode, .idea, .cache,
node_modules, build, Build, out, dist, bin, obj, target,
__pycache__ and .mte-compile-commands. Edit the list when a project of
yours keeps real sources somewhere that name would hide — Restore defaults
puts the list back. A changed list re-indexes the open folder immediately.
An empty list means "index everything"; it is not read as "use the defaults".
The workspace panel¶
A dockable tree of the chosen folder. Double-click a file to open it. The tree refreshes automatically when files change on disk.
Inside every folder the subfolders come first, then the files, each group in
alphabetical order. Upper and lower case are not told apart, and numbers inside a
name are compared by value, so file2.txt comes before file10.txt. The order
is the same on Windows and macOS.
Right-click an item for its context menu:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| New File… | Create a file in the selected folder. |
| New Folder… | Create a sub-folder. |
| Rename… | Rename the selected file or folder. |
| Delete… | Delete the selected file or folder (with confirmation). |
| Reveal in Explorer | Show the item in the system file manager. |
Other features follow the workspace
Opening a folder broadcasts the new root to the rest of the editor, so features like Find in Files can default their search to the current workspace.