You can change the color of the default file and folder icons using the command palette:
or via user settings:
"material-icon-theme.folders.color": "#ef5350",
"material-icon-theme.files.color": "#42a5f5",
You can change the design of the folder icons using the command palette:
or via user settings:
"material-icon-theme.folders.theme": "specific"
You can set a custom opacity for the icons:
"material-icon-theme.opacity": 0.5
If colors do not make you happy you can change the icons to have less saturation making them look grayish or completely grayscale by setting saturation to 0:
"material-icon-theme.saturation": 0.5
You can also achieve no saturation (i.e., grayscale) by setting Toggle Grayscale to ON.
You can customize the icon associations directly in the user settings.
With the *.[extension]
pattern you can define custom file icon associations. For example you could define an icon for *.sample
and every file that ends with .sample
will have the defined icon. However, not all files with the same file extension always have the same icon. For some specific file names there is a special icon. In order to overwrite all the specific file icons as well, two asterisks must be set instead of one, i.e. **.[extension]
.
If there's no leading *
it will be automatically configured as filename and not as file extension.
"material-icon-theme.files.associations": {
"*.ts": "typescript",
"**.json": "json",
"fileName.ts": "angular"
}
It's possible to add custom icons by adding a path to an SVG file which is located relative to the extension's dist folder. However, the restriction applies that the directory in which the custom icons are located must be within the extensions
directory of the .vscode
folder in the user directory.
For example a custom SVG file called sample.svg
can be placed in an icons
folder inside of VS Code's extensions
folder:
.vscode
┗ extensions
┗ icons
┗ sample.svg
In the settings.json (User Settings only!) the icon can be associated to a file name or file extension like this:
"material-icon-theme.files.associations": {
"fileName.ts": "../../icons/sample"
}
Note: The custom file name must be configured in the settings without the file ending .svg
as shown in the example above.
It's also possible to clone existing file icons and change their colors to create new icons that can be associated with file names or file extensions. The following example shows how to clone the rust
icon:
"material-icon-theme.files.customClones": [
{
"name": "rust-mod",
"base": "rust",
"color": "blue-400",
"fileNames": ["mod.rs"]
},
{
"name": "rust-lib",
"base": "rust",
"color": "light-green-300",
"lightColor": "light-green-600",
"fileNames": ["lib.rs"]
}
]
This will create two new icons called rust-mod
and rust-lib
that are associated with the file names mod.rs
and lib.rs
respectively. The base
property defines the icon that should be cloned (in this case the rust
icon). The color
property defines the color of the new icon. The lightColor
property is optional and defines the color of the icon when Visual Studio Code is running with a light color theme. The fileNames
property defines the file names that should be associated with the new icon. There's also a fileExtensions
property, which can be used to associate the new icon with file extensions ("fileExtensions": ["ext", "ext2"]
).
#RRGGBB
color for the color
and lightColor
properties, if you want to stick with colors from the material palette, you can check the full list of allowed aliases here.base
here.The following configuration can customize the folder icons. It is also possible to overwrite existing associations and create nice combinations. For example you could change the folder theme to "classic" and define icons only for the folder names you like.
"material-icon-theme.folders.associations": {
"customFolderName": "src",
"sample": "dist"
}
Similar to the files, it is also possible to reference your own SVG icons for folder icons. Here it's important to provide two SVG files: one for the folder if it's closed and another one for the opened state. These two files - let's call them "folder-sample.svg" and "folder-sample-open.svg" - have to be placed into a directory which is relative to the extensions dist folder. This directory has to be somewhere inside of the .vscode/extensions
folder.
In our example we place them into an icons
folder inside of the .vscode/extensions
folder:
.vscode
┗ extensions
┗ icons
┣ folder-sample.svg
┗ folder-sample-open.svg
In the settings.json (User Settings only!) the folder icons can be associated to a folder name (e.g. "src") like this:
"material-icon-theme.folders.associations": {
"src": "../../../../icons/folder-sample"
}
It's also possible to clone existing folder icons and change their colors to create new icons that can be associated with folder names. The following example shows how to clone the admin
folder icon:
"material-icon-theme.folders.customClones": [
{
"name": "users-admin",
"base": "admin",
"color": "light-green-500",
"lightColor": "light-green-700",
"folderNames": ["users"]
},
{
"name": "roles-admin",
"base": "admin",
"color": "purple-400",
"folderNames": ["roles"]
}
]
This will create two new icons called users-admin
and roles-admin
that are associated with the folder names users
and roles
respectively. The base
property defines the icon that should be cloned (in this case the admin
folder icon). The color
property defines the color of the new icon. The lightColor
property is optional and defines the color of the icon when Visual Studio Code is running with a light color theme. The folderNames
property defines the folder names that should be associated with the new icon.
#RRGGBB
color for the color
and lightColor
properties, if you want to stick with colors from the material palette, you can check the full list of allowed aliases here.base
here.With the following configuration you can customize the language icons. It is also possible to overwrite existing associations.
"material-icon-theme.languages.associations": {
"languageId": "iconName",
"json": "json"
}
You can see the available icon names in the overview above. See "Known language identifiers" in the VS Code documentation for a list of permitted values for languageId
.
Press Ctrl-Shift-P
to open the command palette and type Material Icons
.
| Command | Description |
| --------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Activate Icon Theme | Activate the icon theme. |
| Change File Color | Change the color of the file icons. |
| Change Folder Color | Change the color of the folder icons. |
| Change Folder Theme | Change the design of the folder icons. |
| Change Opacity | Change the opacity of the icons. |
| Change Saturation | Change the saturation value of the icons. |
| Configure Icon Packs | Selects an icon pack that enables additional icons (e.g. for Angular, React, Ngrx). |
| Toggle Explorer Arrows | Show or hide the arrows next to the folder icons. |
| Restore Default Configuration | Reset to the default configuration. |
| Toggle Grayscale | Set icon saturation to 0
(grayscale), or 1
(color). |
Would you like to contribute?
Take a look at the contribution guidelines and open a new issue or pull request on GitHub.