Add an optional configurable toolbar below the menu

[morozovsk]

Whole my life I used ide where there was a customizable toolbar. I starded to use vscode and stopped to use it after one day. It is impossible to remember all shorcuts. In any other popular ide you can put any menu item on toolbar and use it from time to time.

visual vtudio:

idea:

eclipse:

netbeans:

code blocks:

komodo ide:

atom:

notepad++:

gedit:

github:

WTF MS? VS code? VS users?

Don't tag it "out-of-scope" as you did before with similar requests. Even simple editors have toolbar. It isn't advanced feature it's basic feature for most people. Using ide without toolbar is not user friendly for most users. It is vim way.

People really need it like "exit from vim":

FAQ FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE AGAINST THE TOOLBAR:

I don't want to use toolbar so I am against that feature-request.

It is not a problem "it is optional toolbar". If you don't want you can don't use it.

If you want it so why don't you form a team and submit a PR?

People have offered, go look at the many other bug reports made on the same issue. MS has said they would likely reject it. They don't even want to add hooks to make a plugin possible. So it's not a resource issue, it's an ideological one.

Temporary workaround by @GorvGoyl:

It seems like it won't be the high priority feature in foreseeable future so I made this extension which adds handy buttons like beautify, list files, undo, redo, save all etc to the editor menu bar in the VSCode. Shortcut Menu Bar

[minig0d]

Insofar as the argument around "UI and API bloat" the top requested feature right now #10121 is the ability to drag panes outside the main window. Clearly people have many different ideas about their preferred workflow. VSCode has many features I don't use. That doesn't mean I think they should be removed. It means they should be there if I need/want them.

This... OR at least be ABLE to extend the program to address needed capabilities... if people want floating windows why not just open a second copy of VSC or expand the window across two monitors and select a different layout... (View > Editor Layout) they already have a ton of different ones... But honestly, that sounds like something that shouldn't take more than a couple days to knock out...

But if you look at the release notes from the latest version (Help > Release Notes if you want to pull them up to see for yourself) look at how many of those changes are "advanced features" or cater to only a small subset of users, etc..

[ronnyek]

Should have had a party for the 2yr anniversary of this issue, to commemorate all those OTHER issues that were just closed for out of scope etc etc etc

[grndkntrl]

Just adding my voice to get a proper customisable toolbar option added as a matter of priority.

FFS it's long overdue MS!!

[onolox]

MS is draconius at best...

Some issues are simply toss away, this IDE is like if just one guy is making it, and not dozens...

Like the problem with poor rendering, or "No toolbar here!". I really think that the devs of this IDE don't use it!

[hoopdy]

I was not aware of this thread and submitted a request for a customizable toolbar. It was rejected/closed because it is not a feature that they intend to consider within the next two years. I was also referred to this thread.

This is really my only issue with VS Code and it is an odd departure from all other MS programs that I have used since windows became a thing.

On the other had, VS Code is free for personal and business use and is presented as a "lightweight" editor as opposed to a full-fledged IDE. MS Visual Studio is not free for business. I imagine that they would like to avoid the possibility that VS Code could supplant MS Visual Studio entirely. I am not a professional developer and have not used a lot of different IDEs. Other than the toolbar, I am not familiar enough with MSVS 2019 to see any other benefits to using it, and it seems to fall short in some other areas.

I imagine there is someway for a user to code a compatible extension that might add this feature (beyond what already exists, which are great but not very robust). However, as I said, I am not very knowledgeable, so maybe there isn't.

I hope that they reopen this issue eventually, which they may if VSCode continues to expand its user base quickly. In the meantime, it is pretty good software given that it is entirely free.

[minig0d]

I imagine there is someway for a user to code a compatible extension that might add this feature (beyond what already exists, which are great but not very robust). However, as I said, I am not very knowledgeable, so maybe there isn't.

There is not... (I believe the answer was somewhere above but I think the issue was something like the api only allows access to like 10 hard-coded functions rather than exposing the full spectrum of commands like all other parts of the IDE have access to.

And it baffles me that despite the search traffic length of time this has been open, amount of support, ease it should be to implement for them, etc. still not a single comment from the dev team on here...

Free or not, numerous other features that are of benefit to way fewer users have been released (which clearly took significantly more time than this one would to implement) so it's really a shame.

[bebo-dot-dev]

There is not... (I believe the answer was somewhere above but I think the issue was something like the api only allows access to like 10 hard-coded functions rather than exposing the full spectrum of commands like all other parts of the IDE have access to.

There is a somewhat mediocre way to create an extension that extends the toolbar (called "menu" for reasons only known to vscode microsoft people) and the right click context menu with any commands that are needed. I call this mediocre because there are a number of problems with what is currently doable.

1. There is no vscode API for adding commands, toolbar buttons, context menu items etc. The pattern to get things to appear in the toolbar and context menu is driven by declarative contributes entries in the extension package.json file and this file has to be compiled into an extension. This hole means that there's no way to programmatically build a toolbar or menu from configuration at runtime and anything like this has to be hard wired into extension code.
2. The toolbar in the top right area that can be extended to some degree is not really a fully featured application toolbar area in the normal sense. Although buttons with commands can be added to this area, I find the positioning of this area strange with it being inline and to the right of editor tabs rather than being placed above the editors.
3. The lack of API mentioned in (1) and there being no extensible toolbar container area(s) (other than the top right thing) are the blockers preventing anyone developing a flexible and configurable general purpose toolbar extension that might be used by anyone.

I created a hacked together extension for my own purposes and although it does remove some of the pain of having to deal with vscode's command pallete bucket of everything approach for some of my most used commands, it is still far from an ideal solution.

For context, the hacked together extension results in something that looks like the following. To be clear I am not advocating this workaround as the acceptable solution to this issue.

[tobimensch]

This feature request is related, as a toolbar will be needed in order to make it happen: Feature Request: Simplified Text Editor

Please give it an upvote, then it might get put on the backlog.

[heartacker]

To be honest, every time I recommend Vscode to my colleagues, Vscode is too special (rigid) to let them know how to get start . nobody wanna(hard) to remember so many key combinations.

[DigoFuerte]

I don't understand the apparent resistance to add this obviously necessary feature

• please add an optional/configurable toolbar. I started looking for a VS toolbar when I got frustrated doing Save All from the top menu - Ctrl K + S throws up a screen showing information about configuring shortcuts - I don't want to waste time configuring shortcuts when a simple toolbar click has been omitted for no good reason. Stop wasting time and just get it done - Microsoft has a wealth of code from Visual Studio that could be repurposed to speed this task along.

[XeonG]

Vscode with a toolbar would finally replace notepad++ ..if they ever actually bothered adding a proper toolbar support that extensions could support (with user customising to chuck out things per workspace)

[ronnyek]

Every new VSCODE update I get, I'm sitting here hoping MS and team will just slip that feature in and we can watch some fancy little animated gif about toolbars.... but nope... still just endless amounts of features that probably benefit <1% of the user base... then something like this, that apparently at least some amount of the user base feels passionately about, still just getting thrown under the rug, in the trash, routed to /dev/null, whatever.

Oh well... I guess team speaks with their actions, and their actions have been a blatant "NO", I think we all just hoped we'd at least show there was interest for this feature. Apparently decisions have been made.

[DigoFuerte]

The funny thing is that more than likely some other dev team are paying attention and will eventually release an editor with the features we have been asking for - and probably more.

At that point, MS will probably pull their thumb from their proverbial - but it would be too late. Why too late? They are clearly not paying attention to their customers - this more than likely means that they are missing loads of other simple stuff they could improve that a rival company could capitalise on.

Until then, we await the next great text manipulator.

---

From: Weston notifications@github.com Sent: 24 August 2020 23:35 To: microsoft/vscode vscode@noreply.github.com Cc: DigoFuerte hotkat25@hotmail.com; Comment comment@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [microsoft/vscode] Add an optional configurable toolbar below the menu (#41309)

Every new VSCODE update I get, I'm sitting here hoping MS and team will just slip that feature in and we can watch some fancy little animated gif about toolbars.... but nope... still just endless amounts of features that probably benefit <1% of the user base... then something like this, that apparently at least some amount of the user base feels passionately about, still just getting thrown under the rug, in the trash, routed to /dev/null, whatever.

Oh well... I guess team speaks with their actions, and their actions have been a blatant "NO", I think we all just hoped we'd at least show there was interest for this feature. Apparently decisions have been made.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/41309#issuecomment-679400537, or unsubscribehttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFC3662TUXE67KO6LPNRNR3SCLTKNANCNFSM4EK3PIJA.

[GorvGoyl]

It seems like it won't be the high priority feature in foreseeable future so I made this extension which adds handy buttons like beautify, list files, undo, redo, save all etc to the editor menu bar in the VSCode. Shortcut Menu Bar

[kryptus36]

@GorvGoyl given the constraints you had to work in I'll call that extension a win. All I really wanted was undo/redo, so thank you! 5 stars from me.

[morozovsk]

@GorvGoyl very nice! 5 stars!

[heartacker]

@GorvGoyl very nice! 5 stars!

no,it is Fearsome that taking too much space of tab-group

[GorvGoyl]

@GorvGoyl very nice! 5 stars!

no,it is Fearsome that taking too much space of tab-group

lol. you can actually disable/enable those icons as per your need.

[XeonG]

It seems like it won't be the high priority feature in foreseeable future so I made this extension which adds handy buttons like beautify, list files, undo, redo, save all etc to the editor menu bar in the VSCode. Shortcut Menu Bar

Nice one, thanks for doing what the entire ms vscode team can't be bothered to do.

I'm guessing having it on a separate toolbar is not possible at this stage?

[kryptus36]

@GorvGoyl very nice! 5 stars!

no,it is Fearsome that taking too much space of tab-group

This is why we need to have an API exposed to allow a "separate configurable toolbar"

But for now, this is likely the best it can be. Given it has 10k+ users, I'd say the need for a toolbar definitely exists. It is "good enough" for me.

[alka79]

@GorvGoyl : many thanks for your extension. It is to me the best toolbar available. Too bad it does not come up when you search for "toolbar" in the extensions panel.

I am new to VSCode and I initially though that I missed the setting during the install to show the toolbar ! Searched for a long time until I found this thread.

However, I found easily the "printer friendly" keyboard-shortcuts pdf. (sarcastic) LOL.

So.... in the view of the dev team, a typical VSCode user has a keyboard, a mouse and a pile of cheat sheets on his desk. Not me. more sarcastic LOL.

[ronnyek]

Literally every time I see a vscode update... I read through the 10s of things I'd literally never use (admittedly that doesnt mean no one will) and think... yeah but... still no toolbars.

I appreciate the efforts put forth by people attempting to develop extensions that help as best they can.... but I feel like the fact that this issue is still here and has had little to no input or attention from ms devs (nevermind the dozens of issues that were blatantly just closed with no reasoning).

Way to go team!

[svoop]

Use Atom instead. It's pretty easy to add a toolbar to Atom. However, now that GitHub/Atom has been swallowed, updates have become rare and serious bugs (i.e. syntax coloring) just live on and on and on. Sad to see that they let one editor die and don't care much about what users of the other editor need.

[ronnyek]

Oh I use webstorm for most things I'd be using vscode for... I still got it installed... I just wouldn't dream of replacing a competent IDE with it (yet anyway).

[marcio0]

I'd also love a toolbar where I can add actions for extensions. Keyboard shortcuts are cool and all but I can't memorize everything every extension does.

[moon6969]

Could you please add "Accessibility" label to this issue? It's difficult for me to use the keyboard all the time.

[deepakjgupta]

Just adding my vote. Please add a toolbar to Visual Studio code. Until then, it’s Visual Studio 2019 for me.

[GitMensch]

Pingback for issue in Theia-IDE: https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/7540

[CodeAsm]

Just adding my vote. Please add a toolbar to Visual Studio code. Until then, it’s Visual Studio 2019 for me.

Isnt that what MS wants? pull you in with VSCode and community edition, then lure you to their Visual Studio paid subscribtions/products for "pro" features? or "build in, no need for a extension"

anyway, I love VScode, toolbar would be awesome for my spouse (I would love to get her to code next to writing stuff in word). its mostly commandline stuff for me tho. but im a Linux user anyway, so my opinion doesnt matter much for windows/mac users

[jstamets-ncino]

This

[Tharkis]

Still not a backlog candidate after 2 years?

[heartacker]

IMHO, I believe that VSCode should add an unconfigurable tool bar, and extension contributor just can add some icon to toolbar for current related file, maybe we can combine vscode-offical-toobar and action-bar in one row

[shepazon]

I'd like to throw my hat in here by saying that I not only want a configurable toolbar, I want the ability to create multiple toolbars that are selected automatically by workspace or by the programming language for the current file. And I'd like to be able to add more than one toolbar to an editor, like two rows on top and one on the bottom, or even a toolbar on top and another, vertical, toolbar down the left side of the editor. Then I could put common buttons down the left and project-specific ones at the top.

In particular, I want to be able to click buttons to insert snippets, ideally with the option to have a dialog box that appears if the snippet has placeholders to fill in, so you can enter that information before the snippet gets inserted at all.

But I'd settle for just one customizable toolbar that I could put simple snippets into.

This is probably the main flaw in VS Code at this point, from my perspective: lack of customizable toolbars.

[GitMensch]

Still not a backlog candidate after 2 years?

@Tharkis you've missed something:

bpasero added this to the Backlog milestone on 24 Oct 2019

... currently together with the 2609 other open issues listed there.

[ronnyek]

@GitMensch too bad it was put there to die, like the many many many many other issues requesting the same thing. (and the countless issues that were just closed prior to this).

The only reason this issue wasn't outright killed, was because vscode team wanted to stop people from creating more issues about it (opinion or speculation...). (give em a bit of hope it might happen one day).

[darren4321]

+1 this request

[ericrrichards]

Incredible that this has never been added in all of these years.

[dwillis77]

Can somebody please give us an honest explanation of why this hasn't moved up higher on the priority list? I understand its in the backlog with many other requests, but with so many people requesting this for years and it possibly being one of the biggest/most obvious gaps currently in VS Code when compared to other similar products, it seems absolutely unthinkable that it still has not been added (at least as an option to turn on/off so those that want the minimalist interface can go without it).

On top of that it doesn't even seem like it would be all that difficult or time-consuming to implement - maybe I'm wrong on that, and if so then I apologize for the assumption, but it seems like simply adding a UI bar with buttons that are shortcuts for functions that already exist in the app wouldn't be all that difficult.

So if anybody knows the actual reason for why this hasn't been done yet...please, enlighten us! Better yet...please, realize that this relatively simple addition would massively improve the workflow for so many people...and re-prioritize it accordingly so it actually gets implemented one day!

Thank you!

[ahdung]

Any news?

[nickcoad]

Can somebody please give us an honest explanation of why this hasn't moved up higher on the priority list? I understand its in the backlog with many other requests, but with so many people requesting this for years and it possibly being one of the biggest/most obvious gaps currently in VS Code when compared to other similar products, it seems absolutely unthinkable that it still has not been added (at least as an option to turn on/off so those that want the minimalist interface can go without it).

On top of that it doesn't even seem like it would be all that difficult or time-consuming to implement - maybe I'm wrong on that, and if so then I apologize for the assumption, but it seems like simply adding a UI bar with buttons that are shortcuts for functions that already exist in the app wouldn't be all that difficult.

So if anybody knows the actual reason for why this hasn't been done yet...please, enlighten us! Better yet...please, realize that this relatively simple addition would massively improve the workflow for so many people...and re-prioritize it accordingly so it actually gets implemented one day!

Thank you!

If I had to guess, I would say it hasn't been implemented because over a period of three and a half years, out of VS Code's 14 million users, there are less than 180 users who have expressed an interest in seeing this feature developed. Hell, let's be generous and also count the thumbs up reactions on the OP, and not even assume some of those people also commented, and call it ~450 users.

I wouldn't expect any company to make UI decisions or prioritise tasks based on such a tiny segment (~0.003%) of their user-base.

[GitMensch]

If you add the search machine insights like https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?date=2016-07-01%202022-01-04&q=vscode%20toolbar,visual%20studio%20code%20toolbar (that's only google, mind you) the numbers of users increase - but altogether it is still below 1%. The point of a UI change based on this is a good one, but when you look at the last milestones and the UI changes you see that those have much less "votes", too.

After all it comes down to something a lot of people would like to optionally have (even if they need to toggle it on manually one time, or if there only would be an API for this so the 0.something % of people that do care could write an extension) on the one side and the owners of the product that are free to (not) implement whatever they like.

As long as it is on the backlog and not closed there is still "hope" that one of those options will be possible some day. [People asking for "news" obviously don't help at all, other than pinging a lot of people that are subscribed, the "owners" likely aren't because if they would then they'd receive more noise than you can click away in a working day]

[DigoFuerte]

Hi, the figures might be more in support of this feature if a proper survey was conducted with the user-base. Aside: is there any evidence that features have been added on the basis of the number of users requesting a particular feature? When announcements are made on new features they always say "we responded to users asking for...", but they never give the figures - this question came to mind because the last few respondents (on this thread) seemed to argue that is the criteria used for adding new features.

---

From: Simon Sobisch @.> Sent: 04 January 2022 10:14 To: microsoft/vscode @.> Cc: DigoFuerte @.>; Comment @.> Subject: Re: [microsoft/vscode] Add an optional configurable toolbar below the menu (#41309)

If you add the search machine insights like https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?date=2016-07-01%202022-01-04&q=vscode%20toolbar,visual%20studio%20code%20toolbar (that's only google, mind you) the numbers of users increase - but altogether it is still below 1%. The point of a UI change based on this is a good one, but when you look at the last milestones and the UI changes you see that those have much less "votes", too.

After all it comes down to something a lot of people would like to optionally have (even if they need to toggle it on manually one time, or if there only would be an API for this so the 0.something % of people that do care could write an extension) on the one side and the owners of the product that are free to (not) implement whatever they like.

As long as it is on the backlog and not closed there is still "hope" that one of those options will be possible some day. [People asking for "news" obviously don't help at all, other than pinging a lot of people that are subscribed, the "owners" likely aren't because if they would then they'd receive more noise than you can click away in a working day]

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/41309#issuecomment-1004681361, or unsubscribehttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFC366Y47JFFZ666XBBNFOTUULCBRANCNFSM4EK3PIJA. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOShttps://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675 or Androidhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @.***>

[morozovsk]

@dwillis77 @DigoFuerte you can see another feature requests and sort it by count of "+1" like that. for example 3th place: Support 3 way merge for git conflicts has 1351 likes. It was created in 2017 and still not realized. Our feature request is only on 47th place (second page). So "Nothing personal - it's just business".

[dwillis77]

@nickcoad @GitMensch Point taken, but I agree with @DigoFuerte that it would take a proper survey (and one that was easily accessible to all users, e.g. something that popped up a notification in the corner of the UI or something, not one they have to go out of their way to find) to be able to judge "true" interest (IMO, anyway). I don't think we can say that because X number of people bothered to search on Google, find the GitHub thread with the feature request and respond or 1-up it that only that number of people are interested. How many people used N++ for years, tried VS Code for a day, saw it had no toolbar and said "wow that sucks, back to N++"? I almost did that at first, until I dove deeper, gave it some more time to grow on me and found that VS Code is actually a very good editor...but I still see this as a major missing feature (as @morozovsk said at the beginning of this thread - name another popular IDE that doesn't have this).

I totally understand they have to take into account user demand (backed up with solid documented numbers) when deciding which features to prioritize - but my response to that would be, how come they are known to implement features that not many (or in some cases, seemingly nobody) asked for? How do those get pushed to the top of the list?

For example - looking at the November release notes, right at the top of the list I see Marketplace Theme Preview (ability to preview themes from the Marketplace without installing them). Yet searching on here (sorting with most likes first) I was unable to find any request for this particular feature with any large number of likes.

Case in point # 2 - Invisible Unicode Highlighting - also implemented in November - here is the related request - it has 79 likes (over 3+ years since it was opened). Not saying that isn't a useful feature - it is - but something I would contend benefits far fewer people than a toolbar that probably just about any new person switching to VS Code from any other IDE would expect it to have.

So compared to some features that are implemented, this one would actually appear to be quite popular :) Of course there are feature requests with many more likes, but those may be much more complex to implement... I would think that balanced with demand they should take into account ease of implementation, and this does seem to be something that would take comparatively little time to do.

[CreeTar]

4 years passed, and everybody still has an "opinion" that is irrelevant, where's my toolbar mofos

[GitMensch]

The toolbar just got integrated into Theia - https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/pull/10731 so depending on which extensions you need you may want to to try that one... and maybe this gives some "design help" to the vscode ui team.

[badrelmers]

Finally someone who understands what humans need and does not treat us as if we were machines: see this extension, it is a gem, it adds whatever command you want to the left bar or the statusbar, and you can organise the commands by folders https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=usernamehw.commands&ssr=false#review-details

[ronnyek]

@badrelmers I could see this may help some, but I still think the idea of adding a real toolbar with buttons is great, and the fact that request after request is created for this desire, and that its seemingly not even being considered for inclusion is baffling.

Every time I get a vscode update and read the change log... its like wow features for the one or two devs that do this super obscure thing in vscode, but still no toolbars.

[mhanuszh]

When they created this toolbar for the Jupyter notebook I thought they agree with us that toolbars are a great idea. But then they failed to create a real one that others could use. I guess it's only useful if they cant cram all the important stuff somewhere

[LuminairPrime]

What's funny is that with large, high-resolution, wide-screen monitors, most space goes unused! Of COURSE there should be systems in place to use that space.

I just tried the Theia toolbar, and it's excellent!