Easily navigate recent changes based on your pending work and Git history.

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Switch between viewing pending (uncommitted) changes or files modified in configurable time periods. Pending Changes mode shows uncommitted changes (esentially what the Source Control view would give you)

Files are grouped by directory structure, with file counts on folders. Auto-expands to configurable depth.

• Deleted files appear in the tree, clearly indicated
• Exhume: Open deleted file content in a read-only temp file (default action on clicking a deleted file)
• Resurrect: Restores the exhumed file to its original location

Toggle heatmap coloring to give files distinct colors based on their most recent edit. Brighter colors = more recent.

This coloring is toggled in the Fresh Files view, but will also apply to the File Explorer.

At the top the tree, there is a special "pinned items" section. This is for files you want to keep handy independent of whatever the fresh file explorer is showing you. You can pin items with drag&drop or through the right click menu in the file explorer.

• Pin a non-fresh file you need to pay attention to, like a diagram or readme
• Pin that critical file you've had on your desktop for the last 6 years. It does not have to be from your workspace.
• Pin a deleted file
• Pin a search editor (must be saved as a file)
• Create short notes and use it as a todo list. They can be reordered and marked as complete.
• Pin your sensitive API keys as notes. All the pros do it.

The pins are stored per workspace.

Displays info at the top of the tree view:

• When you are behind/ahead of the remote (meaning you need to push/pull)
• When you are behind/ahead of the base branch (meaning you need to merge)

Both options can be individually disabled.

• Filter by Author: Hide files from specific authors
• Filter by Commit: Hide files from specific commits
• Clear filters
• Filters are temporary and reset when changing time windows

Note: The extension tracks the most recent commit per file only. If a file was modified by both a filtered author and a non-filtered author within the time window, the file will be hidden entirely (because the most recent commit is what's filtered). This is a deliberate simplification - for deeper history analysis, consider using something like GitLens or learning more than 5 git commands.

Organize your files in different ways beyond the standard folder structure:

• File Structure - Traditional folder hierarchy

• Author - Files grouped by who last modified them

• Commit Hash - One group per commit

As well as two additional groupings for advanced git blame use cases.

• Moon Phase (git blame moon)

Uneven distribution of commits during the full moon can indicate werevolves among your contributors.

• Planetary Retrograde (git blame universe)

Includes Pluto.

Note: This is astronomy (hard science), not astrology (garbage). If you want to know if you will have merge conflicts with the changes made by a sagitarius, you need to look elsewhere.

Use "Fresh Files: Quick Open" to get a quick pick showing files from your Fresh File Explorer view. Type to filter by filename or path, then select a file to open it. This is similar to VS Code's Ctrl+P, but filtered to only your fresh files, with some additional actions on top.

Features:

• Respects current time window, author and commit filters
• Special filter options to refine the list
• Special search option to trigger a fulltext search within these files
• You can use the filter first and then search to narrow down the list
  • First filter for example "pending modified"
  • A second quick pick will be shown with only those files
  • Now the search action will search only pending modified files

Note: the quick open excludes deleted files. You'll have to access those from the tree.

• Open / Open to Side - will open either the file or a diff depending on your preference. If the file is already open in some editor group, it will be focused instead.
• Reveal in Explorer / Source Control
• Discard Changes (for pending files)
• Resurrect (for deleted files)

Works with:

• Folders containing multiple repos in subfolders
• Multi-root workspaces
• Worktrees

Submodules:

• Submodules are shown in the tree but not their contents.
• You can also see deleted submodules, but can't exhume them.

I wanted to do more with submodules just for the fun of it but turns out it's not fun at all.

The extension adds several search features.

Answers the question "when was this string ever added or removed?"

Access through the editor right-click menu ("Search Diffs for Selection").

Results appear in a tree view grouped by file and commit, and each match can be clicked to navigate to it.

Access via right-click in the editor → "Line/Function History".

Based on your selection, shows every commit that touched those lines or that function, following renames. This is a wrapper of git log -L.

• Single cursor / single line — treated as a function name (uses the word under the cursor as the funcname pattern)
• Multi-line selection — treated as a line range

A / B comparison: Mark any two commits as A and B, then click Compare to open a diff between those two versions of the file.

Available via:

• right-click menu in the Fresh File Explorer tree
• right-click in the editor context menu

The search icon in the Fresh Files toolbar will open VS Code's search view with all currently visible files pre-filled in the "files to include" pattern. This lets you search only within the files you're actively working on, respecting your current filters and time window. This searches file contents on disk. To search the tree itself, use CTRL+ALT+F.

You can also trigger the search from the quick pick.

• Respects author and commit filters
• Excludes deleted files (they're not on disk to search)
• Configure whether the search opens in the view or as an editor (default)

Problem: "I want to find b in all files that contain a."

Solution: Search for a, then use this action to open another search editor scoped to the files you found with your first search, then search for b. This process can be chained as many times as you want.

The action is available only in search editors, not the search view. But you can easily open your search view as a search editor.

Configuration:

• freshFileExplorer.openSearchInEditor: Open searches in a Search Editor tab instead of the Search view
• freshFileExplorer.searchPatternMaxLength: Maximum pattern length per batch. Set a lower value if you encounter command-line length limits on your OS, or a higher value if your searches are getting batched. The default (4000 chars) is very conservative and can likely be set much higher on Linux.

When you have many files or very long paths, VS Code's underlying search mechanism (ripgrep) can hit OS command-line length limits. In this case, the file list will be split into batches which will open as separate search editors.

There are several new action buttons in the search editor results:

• Search in found files - new search scoped to the files you found
• Open all found files - opens all files as background tabs
• Copy paths - copies all absolute or relative paths from the results

You joined a new company and the codebase has thousands of files. Most haven't been touched in the last 75 years. But the file explorer shows everything, making it overwhelming to find where active development is happening.

You remember a file existed, but it's not there. Was it renamed? Moved? Did you misremember the path? Have you been drinking again? It's someone else's fault this time, but you're questioning your own sanity.

Pain Point: You deleted files and realize you need them. They're committed to git but you wish it was easier to get them back.

You make a commit but now your "pending changes" view is empty. You've lost the mental map of which files you were touching. This actually discourages small, frequent commits because you want to keep that overview.

Pain Point: A large automated change (formatting, linting, dependency updates) pollutes your view of what actually changed.

Pain Point: There just aren't enough todo list apps out there.

Yes. It might even be the only piece of software that does that.

Look under freshfileexplorer. to see all configurable settings.

If you find a bug or have an idea for a faster horse, open an issue.

For bug reports, it is extremely helpful if the problem is reproducible on a public repository.

Fresh File Explorer is not a GitLens replacement. It's a more focused, opinionated tool oriented around finding things you need right now. It doesn't make commits, manage branches, stashes, tags...

Use Fresh File Explorer when

Use GitLens when

Because one of those 25 is actually very similar to Fresh File Explorer, some more comparison can be found here.

This is above average for a VS Code extension.

(a chatbot instructed to pretend to be Linus Torvalds)