Add right-click menu option to collapse folders on current node

[claytongulick]

When you have a project that has a deep structure and many (sometimes hundreds) of folders, expanding and collapsing folders is a core part of the development flow.

Frequently, it's desirable to collapse all of the folders in a subfolder, while leaving the current state of expanded / collapsed folders intact.

The current "collapse" functionality is all-or-nothing - when you select 'collapse folders in Explorer' it collapses everything, which destroys some painstaking folder expand / collapse activity you may have done.

It would be a great enhancement to be able to right click on a node in the explorer and select "collapse subfolders".

Update for clarity: this feature should recursively collapse-all at the folder level, the same way "Collapse Folders In Explorer" does, but at a subfolder level.

Thanks!!!

Edit: Bonus points for "expand subfolders" the same way 😄

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Feature - Collapse parent folder (#116572)
• collapseExplorerFolders has no effect when sidebar is closed (#117391)
• "Open Editors" view should not open collapsed when making visible (#115685)

[gjsjohnmurray]

If you click on the folder to focus it, then press the LeftArrow key this should do what you want.

[claytongulick]

Thanks @gjsjohnmurray ! It does indeed collapse the folder you're on when you do that - but not quite the feature I'm requesting.

I'm requesting a recursive "collapse all" / "expand all" at the folder level, not just collapsing the indicated folder - unless I'm missing something?

Though I do think it would be a nice additional enhancement to make a CTRL-LeftArrow CTRL-RightArrow (or similar) do this in addition to the context menu option.

Edit: I updated the issue description for clarity

[isidorn]

I think this is a request towards the tree, thus forwarding to @joaomoreno
My 2 cents: alt + click could collapse both the node and all children

[joaomoreno]

My 2 cents: alt + click could collapse both the node and all children

Did you even try it? 😄 Alt click already recursively collapses a folder.

Moving it back to you so you can also consider the context menu suggestion in the Explorer, since trees don't own the context menus.

[isidorn]

@joaomoreno yes I tried alt + click and it is not working. Did you try? Does it work for you?

[joaomoreno]

Sure:

vscode/src/vs/base/browser/ui/tree/abstractTree.ts

Line 1132 in 771b019

const recursive = e.browserEvent.altKey;

But note that in async trees (eg explorer):

• Recursive collapse works
• Recursive expand only works on nodes which were already resolved, since expanding unresolved nodes could potentially be infinite

Maybe it's broken on macOS?

[isidorn]

@joaomoreno it works fine. My mistake. When expanding I was mistakenly still holding down alt.

@claytongulick so this works, just use alt + click.
We will not change the explorer context menu