Customizable status bar item locations

[ellman121]

Hello

It would be really nice if one could customize the location of the items in the status bar at the bottom of the editor. For instance, I would want to have git branch information on the right, text encoding and position on the left, etc.

Maybe allow people to sort things with something like

"window.statusBar.items": {
    "left" : ["cursorPosition", "tabWidth"],
    "right": ["textEncoding", "gitBranch", "feedbackButton" ] 
}

[benkimball]

Is there a canonical list somewhere of what items may be displayed in the status bar area? For example, I'm uncertain if extensions can add their own items. If so, there might need to be a way to specify the desired location of items not explicitly listed in the configuration setting:

"window.statusBar.items": {
  "left" : ["cursorPosition", "tabWidth", "*"], # i.e., "put anything I didn't list on the left"
  "right": ["textEncoding", "gitBranch", "feedbackButton" ] 
}

[lannonbr]

So status bar items are placed by calling addEntry on an IStatusbarService. The current algorithm for inserting items is priority based as seen here. So the way status bar items are added to the status bar would likely be need to be refactored to allow users to configure where items can be placed.

As well, @benkimball, Extensions are allowed to add their own entries to the status bar, so that will have to be accounted for as well.

@bpasero, Do you or anyone else on the vscode team know of a possible way to implement such?

[ferreteleco]

Any update on this?

[xcesiv]

Pinging to see if any updates on this?

[TricolorHen061]

Yes, please make this a feature and I will use VSCode as my new editor. But for now, Atom will have to do.

[saschamander]

+1

[kanlukasz]

Maybe it could be prioritized, e.g. 100, 95, 65 etc. to have more flexible ways
Example:

    "window.statusBar.items": {
        "left": [
            "cursorPosition": 100,
            "tabWidth": 85
        ],
        "right": [
            "textEncoding": 100,
            "gitBranch": 56",
            "feedbackButton": 24"
        ]
    }

[PLyczkowski]

Maybe allow people to sort things with something like

"window.statusBar.items": {
    "left" : ["cursorPosition", "tabWidth"],
    "right": ["textEncoding", "gitBranch", "feedbackButton" ] 
}

Please no more settings in json. Drag and drop would work just fine..

[maxnordlund]

But it still needs to be saved somewhere, and settings is the natural place. Drag-n-drop as an alternative UI for this seems like a good idea though.

[ellman121]

@PLyczkowski I happen to enjoy modifying my settings in raw JSON. Beyond that, it makes it super easy to transport between installations and also allows for users to see directly how things are "under the hood"

[jackmawer]

I don't have anything to add apart from to bump this issue. Even exposing the priority of built-in status bar items would go some way to alleviating this problem.

[imkzh]

how much is the chance that someone may want some items being centered?

also vote up for prioritized value, because user may be in a RTL context/culture.

    "window.statusBar.items": {
        "major": {
            "cursorPosition": 100,
            "tabWidth": 85
        },
        "minor": {
            "textEncoding": 100,
            "gitBranch": 56",
            "feedbackButton": 24",
        },
        "center": {"timeAndDate": 1},
        "hidden": ["feedback", "gitPush"]
    }

for items not mentioned in the list, it should be placed at it's default place with some predefined/requested priority level (saying "lowest" | "highest" | value ).

[den-is]

In my case, it will be useful to move the "Project manager" button to the far-left position.

[ppazos]

I would like to change the location of the status bar items too :) 👍

[Lee182]

Well I would like to move git blame to the end of the status bar. For some reason it keeps flashing as I type meh. Surely when you right click the menu couldn't you make that a draggable list like with tree view.. and just add a seperter for left and right.

[Srineesh-tide]

still no updates

[dmorrison]

Bump. I have this weird thing where the GitLab & Jest extensions have intermingled Status Bar items, and I'd like to manually fix their positions:

[blundin]

Please include this! It would be so helpful to be able to arrange these items based on what they show and how I want them. Please!

[Pesc0]

Bump!

[starball5]

Related on Stack Overflow:

• How can I change the order of status bar items in VS Code?
• How move branch name to right in vscode like intellij?

[dantman]

It would be lovely if I could fix the current Jira issue and GitHub PR to be next to each other.

[Erik-vdb]

It's 2055.
@xcesiv
Your turn

[zweack]

@Erik-vdb chatgpt will get frustrated with this and recreate vs code for AI. We can borrow that.

[contang0]

It is now the year of 2023.

[GrantGryczan]

Please don't post comments just saying you want this feature. That's what the 👍 reaction is for. These comments are not constructive and just send unnecessary notifications to the people watching this issue.

I posted this comment before, but it got buried, and now I'm getting lots of unnecessary notifications from this issue again, so I guess that wasn't a good long-term solution. I was subscribed to this issue to get real updates on it, but since I read VS Code changelogs anyway and would see if this feature gets added there, I'm just gonna unsubscribe here. (I say this in case it helps anyone with the idea to do the same.)

As a side note, these types of comments (on many issues, not just this one) are unfortunately the majority of my GitHub notifications, and I can imagine for people even more active on GitHub than I am, it drowns out the small few constructive comments that people are subscribing to issues in hopes of seeing. No hard feelings against those who post these kinds of comments--they probably haven't even considered this problem--but I do think it'd be nice if the problem had a long-term solution (maybe something implemented by GitHub itself, no clue, but that discussion doesn't belong here so I'll leave it at that).

[tylerlaprade]

@GrantGryczan, on the one hand, I share your frustration at unnecessary notifications. On the other hand, many GitHub repos are set up to auto-close tickets after a period of inactivity, so users have grown the habit of periodically "bumping" issues to keep them alive. It's not a situation with an obvious silver bullet, in my opinion.

[rdhar]

In addition to the placement of entries within the Workbench Status bar, I thought it might be an idea to consider the ability to relocate the bar itself.

Just as the ability to customize layout/appearance has been critical for improving accessibility of various panels/bars for any given user, the option of moving the Status bar to the top of the window brings it within eyeline and closer to where focus tends to be.

To help better visualise this request, here's a mock-up of the requested outcome after the Workbench Status bar has been repositioned to the top.

To get the ball rolling on this feature request, #204933 has been raised and could do with some 👍 on the original post.

[shellscape]

I switched to Zed. done with the poor project management and malicious changes in vscode.

[etoyz]

Any update?

[Alecton4]

I would also like the ability to set "hiding priority" of the items. If the status bar gets too narrow to display all the items, the most important ones should be shown. Are there open issues regarding this?

[fboranek]

This is my use case with problem which I hope will be solved by this feature.

• Coding, compiling and debugging c++ project
• All relevant action like run, build, are located after clangd
  
• You click on debug or run and clangd show something and move all action to right and you click on something else. So frustrating.

How I going to solve my problem?

• Move all field which changing size to the end of status bar

[mateusbadalotti]

Any updates on this? Would be very useful

[bluet]

Been 7 years and we're still all as the same as in the good old days. And statusbar, too. 🥲

[AnrDaemon]

Between this and #13960 … guess, what?
But they spend enormous amount of time on accessibility features.

[NinjaMandalorian]

Bump

[ylazy]

Please add this feature!

[beratbayram]

Using meta key to drag them around would be great (like macOS topbar)

[meadowsys]

Between this and #13960 … guess, what? But they spend enormous amount of time on accessibility features.

do they really? :P #519

[AnrDaemon]

Regarding interface font, I hardly have an issue with it since they fixed the scaling factor not correctly saving/restoring on restarts. I don't mind the default font.