Choose folders to be ignored during search in VS Code

Question

Right now when I use ?+O to search for files, the fuzzy matching appears to operate over all files in the current project. Unfortunately, this includes a number of files from build and vendor directories. So, for instance, if I want to search for all JavaScript files and do ?+O and type .js in, the file and symbol results include around 1500 hits and all of them except the two ones are complete noise.

Is there a way to specify certain directories to be ignored for purpose of search?

Answer 1

Temporary Exclusions

From the search function, click the ellipsis to show the files to include and files to exclude text boxes. Enter any files and folder to exclude (separated by commas).

Persistent Exclusions

From menu choose File ?? Preferences ?? Settings ?? User/Workspace Settings and filter default settings to search.

• User settings will apply to all workspaces
• Workspace settings will apply only to this workspace

You can modify the search.exclude setting (copy from default setting to your user or workspace settings). That will apply only to searches. Note that settings from files.exclude will be automatically applied.

Toggling search exclusions

You can (sometimes accidentally) toggle if these exclusions are enabled or disabled when searching using the gear icon in the files to exclude text box. Click the ellipsis, then the gear icon to toggle.

Additional documentation on configuring settings in Visual Studio Code

If the settings don't work

You might also need to Clear Editor History (See: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/6502).

Example

I am developing an EmberJS application which saves thousands of files under the tmp directory.

If you select WORKSPACE SETTINGS on the right side of the search field, the search exclusion will only be applied to this particular project. And a corresponding .vscode folder will be added to the root folder containing settings.json.

This is my example settings:

{
    // ...
    "search.exclude": {
        "**/.git": true,
        "**/node_modules": true,
        "**/bower_components": true,
        "**/tmp": true
    },
    // ...
}

Note: Include a ** at the beginning of any search exclusion to cover the search term over any folders and sub-folders.

Picture of search before updating settings:

Before updating the settings the search results are a mess.

Picture of search after updating settings:

After updating the settings the search results are exactly what I want.