Visual Studio Code closes my file when I search for new ones

Question

I'm using Visual Studio Code for working and I use ctrl-P command to search for files in my directory.

The problem appears when I want to search for another file, it opens it in the place of the first searched file, closing it.

Is any setting for avoiding this pain?

Exciter

Double-click the file header so it changes from italic to regular. Then it will stay open. – Thespian

By the way that's the default way ! Try this link code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/codebasics – Sheathing

@john What's the keyboard shortcut? If you're already ctrl-p-ing your way to opening, it'd be great if you didn't have to take your hand off of the keyboard to go to [whatever comes after preview mode]. – Babby

@Babby Ctrl+K, Enter. If you want to reassign it, it's called workbench.action.keepEditor – Thespian

Whoever in the dev team decided this would be a good idea needs to be fired ASAP – Gilliland

You can also open the file by a double-click and it will be kept open. If it's already in preview (tab title is in italics), you can also keep it open by double-clicking the title, or Ctrl+K, Enter. – Wishbone

What a stupid behaviour lol. I did this uncountable times too. :( – Streptothricin

Answer 1

By default, VSCode opens files in preview mode. This is indicated by their name being italic in the menu bar. As John noted, you can double click on the file to fully open it.

To disable this behavior, try setting:

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false

Cellulosic

Thanks for this fix!. Amazed this isn't the default as this is the way every other editor on the planet works. Found this so frustrating. – Crosstree

You can use ctrl+K, 'Enter' to keep it open. Don't forget to let go of CTRL while pressing 'Enter'. – December

You can also open the file by a double-click and it will be kept open. If it's already in preview (tab title is in italics), you can also keep it open by double-clicking the title, or Ctrl+K, Enter. – Wishbone

Answer 2

When you select a file from search result -> you will see the file open with file name italicized. This means that the file is open in preview mode. Now any other file you choose to select will replace its content in this tab.

To make this tab stick among the open tabs you can:

double click to select the file or double click on already selected file in search pane -> you will see the name of file is not italicized anymore(meaning the file is now pinned as a tab)

Alternatively,

You can use the below setting to have all selected files open as a separate tab:

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false

This setting is found here : Files -> Preferences-> Settings

But the downside of using this is that all files you click on will remain opened and you would then need to clean tabs after your search.

Voiceless

Thank you! double click is the best idea – Oidea

Or on mac: Code -> settings – Cestoid

Answer 3

Ctrl+P -- For targetting a file Alt+Enter -- For Opening that file into next tab

Juvenile

On MacOS that's Cmd+P then Option+Enter – Hydrophane

Answer 4

Double click on the files instead of a single click. That worked for me.

Scripture