How to disable preview file with single-click in vs code?

Question

I would much rather double-click to open file, and prevent single-click previews. How do we do that in vs code?

You can turn off preview by setting `"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false`, but you could not prevent single-click, which means single-click will open file for editing directly rather than preview. — Takahiro, Oct 31 '16 at 05:11
You can convert a preview to a true editor with `workbench.action.keepeditor` which is `⌘K, Enter` by default (being buried it's a Sublime Text throwback) — nik.shornikov, Mar 06 '19 at 17:42

score 152 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 01 '18 at 09:14

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From vscode 1.20:

"workbench.list.openMode": "doubleClick",

answered Feb 01 '18 at 09:14

Alex

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I had to fight through a barrage of people answering the wrong question (funnily enough trying to disable preview mode by enabling a more permanent mode actually makes the issue more annoying!) to get to this, thank you @Alex – jmcgrory Dec 11 '19 at 10:15
I had the exact problem of @jmcgrory, this shoul be marked as solution – Ares9323 Mar 26 '20 at 19:32
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This is wrong. The preview function remains working. – Joel Karunungan Apr 19 '20 at 03:58

score 82 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 18:41

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The only way to disable file previewing when clicked on at all is by setting "workbench.editor.enablePreview" to false.

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false,

answered Oct 25 '17 at 18:41

Michael J. Calkins

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This does NOT change the behaviour, that the file only gets opened in a tab when double clicked. The only difference is, that it gets opened in "edit mode" rather than in "preview mode". – phifi Nov 17 '17 at 10:14
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That's how you disable file previewing and open the file. VS Code can't do the double click thing. – Michael J. Calkins Nov 22 '17 at 19:37
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@MichaelJ.Calkins has the correct answer to this issue. This should be marked as correct. – Armin May 01 '19 at 20:10
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this is for older version, please look at the top answer – Yuki Jun 22 '19 at 16:05
This also also works for opening files with CTRL+P. – Iain Samuel McLean Elder Oct 29 '19 at 11:56

Imtiaz Sakib · Answer 3 · 2020-02-11T11:08:54.030

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Go to File->Preferences->Settings, search for the following and disable it:

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false

Italian Trulli

edited Feb 11 '20 at 11:08

answered Nov 01 '19 at 06:55

Imtiaz Sakib

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Making this change will cause single-clicks to open (rather than preview) files. If you want to disable all single-click actions, use Alex's suggestion. – Tony Dec 23 '19 at 12:50
This is the wrong answer. This will open the files on single click. OP and myself wants to disable single click preview and single click file opens. It should be single click selects the file and double click opens it. The issue is that clicking a file in the explorer window opens a preview causing you to lose focus on the document that you want to keep open. Your suggestion to remove previews actually causes automatic file opening, which is a worse disruptive behaviour. – Joel Karunungan Apr 19 '20 at 03:57

Andy Brown · Answer 4 · 2020-09-05T08:50:41.690

The necessary settings to prevent single-click in the Explorer view opening a file at all are in the previous answers to this question but you need to apply two of them:

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false

That will change single-click in the explorer to fully open the file instead of opening it in preview (italics) mode. Arguably this is worse than before unless you're on a touchscreen device so you also need the following setting:

"workbench.list.openMode": "doubleClick"

Now you have to double-click on a file in Explorer to open it and preview is off. Finally, I had to restart all open instances of vscode for the doubleClick change to take effect.

vscode is a moving target so I should point out this was tested in version 1.45.1.

score 8 · Answer 5 · answered May 20 '17 at 10:57

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As far as I know there is no way to do this right now (version 1.12).

Many people "requested" this feature, just look at this GitHub issue.

.. and a relatively new comment about the issue:

Sorry, didn't have much time to look into this again. As it stands right now we need to clean up some debt first in the area of tree usage throughout our code before we can ask for a PR again.

answered May 20 '17 at 10:57

Dávid Molnár

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That behaviour really annoys me - thanks for the link to the issue though. – phifi Nov 17 '17 at 10:16
Thanks for the link, the issue was closed. 3 year later this issue is still not resolved. – Joel Karunungan Apr 19 '20 at 03:59
Look at the openMode option! – Dávid Molnár Apr 20 '20 at 05:12

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 26 '19 at 14:11

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Here is how to set this from UI level if you do not want to edit files directly: File -> Preferences -> Workbench -> List: Open mode = 'doubleClick'

or

File -> Preferences -> search for 'Open mode' and set it to 'doubleClick'

answered Feb 26 '19 at 14:11

Strabek

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score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 11 '19 at 16:02

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So I had to do both suggestions by @Alex and @MichaelJ.Calkins. More specifically I had to configure the open mode setting to click and enable preview to true. That way I can preview with a single click and actually keep it open with a double click. Below are the settings that were configured.

"workbench.list.openMode": "singleClick",

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": true,

answered Sep 11 '19 at 16:02

Jand

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This is exactly how I wanted it. Thanks – Joel H Dec 26 '19 at 09:59

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered May 06 '20 at 05:22

Probably you're mixing the terms. I guess you are talking about "Peek" feature:

And here is how you can disable it:

"editor.gotoLocation.multipleDefinitions": "goto"

Also, there is a "Preview editor" feature:

That could be disabled by:

"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 28 '21 at 18:52

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Another configuration entry (above the "workbench.editor.enablePreview": true) that can prevent VSCode from opening files on new tab is the following:

"workbench.editor.showTabs": false

Make sure it is removed from settings.json or it is set to true.

answered Mar 28 '21 at 18:52

Dávid Konkoly

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How to disable preview file with single-click in vs code?

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