VSCode mode for Rofi

A very handy Rofi menu to open recent Visual Studio Code workspacess and files, written in Rust.

Main features:

• A custom-implemented Rofi mode (a.k.a. plugin) named vscode-recent, to open recent workspaces and files.
• The vscode-recent command line tool to print paths of recent workspaces and files to stdout. Pair it with a selection tool like dmenu, fzf or similar.
• Entries are taken from VSCode's File->Open Recent menu.
• Delete entries from recently opened (also affects VSCode).
• Support for remote and virtual workspaces, files and folders.
• Support for different flavors: Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio Code Insiders, Code - OSS and VSCodium.

This project was largely inspired by rofi-code. Many thanks to @Coffelius for writing it, and to @SabrinaJewson for providing Rust bindings to Rofi's C plugin interface.

If you are curious, I wrote a short wiki article explaining how this tool gets the recent items and opens them.

Install

Package manager

If you're an Arch Linux user, this package is available on the AUR. You can easily install it with an AUR helper like yay, paru, pacaur, etc.

yay -S rofi-vscode-mode

Build from source

You can choose to build and install only the vscode-recent tool (binary), only the plugin or both.

First clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/fuljo/rofi-vscode-mode

Then get a Rust toolchain as you prefer.

Then install the needed dependencies

# Ubuntu / Debian
apt-get install \
  build-essential pkg-config libsqlite3-dev \
  rofi-dev libpango1.0-dev  # only needed for the rofi plugin

# Arch
pacman -S \
  make pkg-config sqlite \
  rofi # only needed for the rofi plugin

Then run make according to your choice:

# Binary and plugin
make all
sudo make install

# Binary only
make bin
sudo make install.bin

# Plugin only
make plugin
sudo make install.plugin

Usage

As a Rofi mode

This library introduces a new mode named vscode-recent. You can run it standalone with the command

rofi -show vscode-recent -modi vscode-recent

or add it to your default modi in ~/.config/rofi/config.rasi, like so

configuration {
	modi: "drun,run,window,vscode-recent";
    show-icons:                 true;
	drun-display-format:        "{name}";
	window-format:              "{w} | {c} | {t}";
}

I highly reccommend assigning a keyboard shortcut for this; for example I use Mod + C to run rofi -show vscode-recent (after adding it to my default modi).

When an item is selected, press:

• Enter to open it
• Shift+Del to permanently delete it from the list

⚠️ Item deletion works by updating the recent items list in VSCode's state database. Do it at your own risk. Please use this feature when VSCode is closed, otherwise your changes may be overwritten.

As a command line tool

If you prefer something other than Rofi to select your entry, we also provide the vscode-recent command that simply writes out the paths line by line. You can then pair it with your favourite selection tool, like dmenu or fzf.

You can use the -c option to set the preferred flavor and the -F option to set the desired ouput format:

• label (default) will show the "tildified" path, which needs to be expanded. Only local entries are not shown.

  sh -c "code $(vscode-recent | dmenu)"

• absolute-path will show the full path. Only local entries are shown.

  code $(vscode-recent -F absolute-path | dmenu)

• uri will show the local or remote URI, read this for hints on how to open it. All entries are shown.

Configuration

Various aspects of this plugin can be configured with environment variables. If you are using keyboard shortcuts to launch Rofi, make sure that these variables are set in the shell that launches Rofi, e.g. by adding an export statement to your ~/.bash_profile.

Configuration of the theme and everything else is left to Rofi itself.

VSCode flavor

Multiple VSCode flavors exist for Linux, see the Arch Wiki for details.

By default this plugin will try to detect a flavor for which both a command in $PATH and a configuration directory exist. If you want to select it by hand, set ROFI_VSCODE_FLAVOR with one of the following values (case insensitive):

ROFI_VSCODE_FLAVOR	Flavor	Command	Configuration directory
code	Visual Studio Code	code	~/.config/Code/
code-insiders	Visual Studio Code Insiders	code-insiders	~/.config/Code - Insiders/
code-oss	Code - OSS	code-oss	~/.config/Code - OSS/
vscodium	VSCodium	codium	~/.config/VSCodium/

Icons

By default icons from Rofi's current icon theme are shown besides the entries. You have three choices:

• Set ROFI_VSCODE_ICON_MODE=none to disable icons
• Set ROFI_VSCODE_ICON_MODE=theme to use the icons from Rofi's current icon theme
• Set ROFI_VSCODE_ICON_MODE=nerd to use icons from a Nerd Font.
  The font can be chosen by setting ROFI_VSCODE_ICON_FONT=fontname (defaults to monospace) and its color by setting ROFI_VSCODE_ICON_COLOR to an #rrggbb or #rrggbbaa value.

A different icon is shown for workspaces, files and folders.

Contributing

If you like this little piece of software and would like to improve it, please fork the repo and create a pull request. Your contributions are greatly appreciated.

If you want to report a problem, please open an Issue. Make sure you include your Rofi version and any error messages that are printed by running the mode from a terminal as described before.

License

This software is released under the MIT license.