Custom Sort Order in File Explorer

[KyleMit]

I'd like to specify a custom sort order in the file explorer. For example sorting folders like this:

components
├── layout
├── ui
├── utils
├── other-folder
└── another-folder

Where the bold folders have an an explicit sort order specified, and then everything else is sorted alphabetically.

Currently, there's a setting for explorer.sortOrder which takes in default | mixed | filesFirst | type | modified, but doesn't allow explicit lists.

API Proposal 1

sortOrder could potentially be extended to take a value of custom with an additional array passed in like this:

{
  "explorer.sortOrder": "custom",
  "explorer.sortCustom": ["layout", "ui", "utils"]
}

API Proposal 2

Another place this shows up in when cloning a wiki project in Azure Dev Ops, which specifies an .order file that provides a custom sort order on their UI

eg. .order

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Extension

If there's a way to accomplish this with an extension, I'd be willing to take a pass at it if folks have any ideas about where to start or if it's possible

Workaround

You could rename folders, 1 - layout, 2- ui, 3-utils, but this approach is much noisier

Further Reading

• How can I manually change the order that folders are listed in Visual Studio Code Explorer?

[isidorn]

Makes sense, however closing as dup of #27286