Put snippets at the bottom of suggestions until typing

[johnknoop]

Today I can choose to have snippets either at the top or at the bottom of the suggestions list. In order to have them quickly accessible, you need to have the editor.snippetSuggestions setting to top. Here is an example using the if snippet. Image if I didn't have the setting value top, then the if-snippet wouldn't be the highlighted item, resulting in a very slow workflow:

However, when I hit ctrl+space to see suggestions for what I am allowed to do in a given context, then it's just annoying that the snippets are shown first in the list. In this example, the suggested items with blue icons are what I'm after:

Feature request: hide the snippets from the list of suggestions unless you've started typing. Or at least add a new option to the editor.snippetSuggestions called topWhenPrefixMatches or something.

This issue addresses the problem, but proposes a different solution that I don't really agree with:
#62236

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Blind snippet insertion (#62236)
• No snippets when using tab completion, matching many snippets, not showing snippets in suggest (#65027)
• [json] don't suggest top level snippet if there's already an object (#53454)
• Snippet Option To Auto Execute on Type (#64135)

[jrieken]

So, the default is to re-sort items based on how well they match as soon as you start typing. That's why the default is 'inline'. With that, the prefix if will sort the snippet if atop because it matches best, but it would not sort snippets atop or to the bottom without prefixes

[johnknoop]

@jrieken No, it will not put the if-snippet on top unless you've selected to always show snippets at the top. With the setting "inline", it looks like this:

Which is useless for situations where you're looking to execute a snippet.

That's why I've chosen the "top" option, because when I type "if", I always want the snippet, not that other thing that also matches "if". So the problem is that now I always get snippets on top, even in situations where I haven't typed anything. Get the problem?

[jrieken]

Which is useless for situations where you're looking to execute a snippet.

Well, I'd say that true for all duplicated suggestions. Sometimes there are duplicates and tbh you best wait for #45039 which is about filtering certain types of suggestions, e.g. keywords, e.g. if. Saying "No snippets in suggestions unless typing selects one" is rather special and won't help in the already complicated IntelliSense world. If you want that one snippet, you can always F1>Insert Snippet, enable tab completion, or bind a keybinding to that one snippet.

[vscodebot]

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[johnknoop]

#45039 wont solve my problem at all. I'm looking for a far simpler solution:

There are two events that can trigger the suggestions list to show:

a: typing something
b: pressing ctrl+space

For scenario a, it works fine right now. For scenario b, the user is clearly not looking for a snippet, so dont show them until she has typed in a letter.

I speak for at least ten other guys at our office who use VS Code when I say that this would be a huge improvement.

[usernamehw]

If you're desperate you can try to temporarily set config before invoking the suggest.

You'll need 2 extensions for that: one to set settings and another to run multiple commands. And when context !suggestWidgetVisible.

Macro would be:

1. Set editor.snippetSuggestions to bottom
2. Invoke suggest (only when !suggestWidgetVisible)
3. Set editor.snippetSuggestions to whatever it was before

[dbsxdbsx]

Currently with version 1.53. When setting editor.snippetSuggestions to top, snippet is still showing on th bottom.