Add editor.contentLeftPadding to add padding between the editorGutter and editor.

[shujaatak]

Note: Please see BOTH screenshots below and also TWO possible solutions at the end!

Please add some option like editor.contentLeftPadding or whatever you want to name it, to resolve at least these two issues:

1. Currently in VS Code, the gutter and the code editor are so close that while clicking in the beginning of a line one can accidentally click on collapse button in the gutter region which sometimes really bother the user.

2. When a user apply a different background color to gutter for either theming purpose or to show that it's not part of the editor region, the code in the editor and also the vertical lines between the first pair of curly braces of code blocks basically touch the gutter. See the following first screenshot.

If we had editor.contentLeftPadding then the user could just add that to settings.json like this:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        "editor.contentLeftPadding": 8px;
        "editorGutter.background" : "#454545",
    },

which could separate code from the gutter and look like this:

There are two ways to solve this issue:

1. Adding editor.contentLeftPadding setting. It will not create any changes to VS Code by default as it would take effect only when the user use this setting, hence, those users who are used to the current user interface of the VS Code will not notice this change.
2. However, if a little padding is added by default in the VS Code , it will not be much noticeable to those users who are used to the current look and feel of the user interface while resolving the above mentioned issues at the same time!

As VS Code doesn't allow users to add custom CSS in it so a setting like editor.contentLeftPadding or built-in default padding for editor's content is required.

If built-in default padding is added to VS Code then a setting to remove that built-in default padding can also be added so that the user can remove it if the user doesn't like it, just like the following settings to remove folding, glyphMargin and lineNumbers:

"editor.folding": false,
"editor.glyphMargin": false
"editor.lineNumbers": "off",

Proof of concept Implementation and Observation

For proof of concept, I added the following CSS code to the end of this CSS file /usr/share/code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.css:

.monaco-editor .lines-content {
    padding-left: 8px;
}

which produces the following neat and required result, such that, now neither I can't accidentally click on folding buttons nor the code touches the gutter:

But I noticed that unlike HTML textarea tag which allows a user to click in the padding area to place cursor at the start of the nearest line no matter how wide padding you set, in VS Code I can't place the cursor at the start of the line by clicking in the padding region which might be desirable by some users.

My VS Code settings.json:

The following are the settings for those who wonder what settings I have for the colors of gutter, tabs and breadcrumb of my VS Code. Note that these color settings look best with Dart+(default dark) theme.

{
    // Look best with "Dart+(default dark)" theme.
    "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        "editorGutter.background" : "#454545",

        "editorGroupHeader.tabsBackground": "#454545",        
        "tab.inactiveBackground":  "#454545",

        "tab.activeBackground": "#5b5b5b",
        "breadcrumb.background": "#5b5b5b",     
    },
}

[shujaatak]

One can see a similar issue with monaco-editor here microsoft/monaco-editor#200.

As VS Code doesn't allow users to add custom CSS in it so a setting like editor.contentLeftPadding or built-in default padding for editor's content is required.

[alexdima]

cc @roblourens . I think you also needed something like this in Notebooks? (I noticed a commit from you)

[roblourens]

I added padding to the glyph margin (breakpoints) then removed it when we didn't need that option anymore. That wouldn't have helped here

[shujaatak]

Please note that I made this comment the part of the issue's description as it seems relevant.

For proof of concept, I added the following CSS code to the end of this CSS file /usr/share/code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.css:

.monaco-editor .lines-content {
    padding-left: 8px;
}

which produces the following neat and required result, such that, now neither I can't accidentally click on folding buttons nor the code touches the gutter:

But I noticed that unlike HTML textarea tag which allows a user to click in the padding area to place cursor at the start of the nearest line no matter how wide padding you set, in VS Code I can't place the cursor at the start of the line by clicking in the padding region which might be desirable by some users.

[shujaatak]

@alexdima Can you please somehow expedite the process to resolve this issue?
Almost all code editors provide default feature to avoid the issues mentioned above but unfortunately vs code lacks this.
We all would be so grateful to you if you please resolve this issue as soon as possible. By the way, I could have helped in resolving this but I don't know very well the internals of vs code.

[mckeed]

There are already settings for editor.padding.top and editor.padding.bottom, so the setting should be editor.padding.left and should result in the same amount of spacing as those do.

[realSilasYang]

When can we get the function satisfifed ... have noticed so many similar issues been proposed !!

[pmeaney]

Echoing OP -- This would be great to have.

So much dead space here-- I don't need empty space in my editor. Please work on adding a way to reduce the gutter around the line numbers. I only need about 2-5 pixels on either side of the line number.

Currently I think there's about 25-30 pixels to the left of line number, and 15-20 to the right.

I'd like to have those 50 pixels available for useful space please. No need for empty, unused space. 😅 😜

In fact, it would be great if there was a "Concise Theme" or "Space Minimalism Theme" that removed as much empty space as possible across Tabs in the editor & terminal, the left & right-side gutters, etc.

Sidenote for anyone trying to reduce unnecessarily large Activity Bar space-- Check out the "Activitus Bar" extension.

Edit: This takes care of some of the issue by allowing me to re-claim pixels from the number bar.. However, it would be great if I could collapse it even more, to 1-2 pixels of gutter.

settings.json

{
    "editor.glyphMargin": false,
    "editor.folding": false,
}

[ishazel]

Hoping for a solution soon :)

[mckeed]

@pmeaney if you want less space in the gutter to the left of the line numbers, the ticket for that is #93887 or #30795

Also, FYI, you can currently reduce the space to the right of the line numbers by setting "editor.showFoldingControls": "never", and it looks like you have some other things enabled that are increasing the line decorations space (to the left of the line numbers) because mine is only 20px wide.

[shujaatak]

@alexdima @bpasero Waiting for a year and counting 🥱

[yCodeTech]

Just stumbled on this looking for this exact solution. Not sure why it's so difficult to get an answer, it's not like it's difficult to implement, as the preliminary work is already there for the padding top and bottom as previously said. Please can we get this implemented.

[starball5]

Related on Stack Overflow:

• (canonical) Add left space/margin/padding in VS Code editor window between line numbers and code
• (duplicate) How can I add padding to VS Code's code editor panel
• (related) Why do certain fonts' characters get cropped off the left margin of the editor panel in VS Code and how can it be fixed?

Recently on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vscode/comments/176br36/is_there_any_way_to_adjust_the_autospacing_at_the/

[dschil138]

Yeah there seems to be a lot of interest in this issue. Lots of people trying to give answers in all those threads but none of them actually do the thing: Give more clickable space before the first character of the line.

[mindThomas]

I want to second this idea. Moving from CLion to VSCode, this difference is one of the things that frustrates me the most.
The missing editor padding from the gutter makes it less clear when reading unindented lines of code (i.e. function declarations etc.), especially when the gutter color is not the same as the editor background.

[mocenigo]

I second this one. The missing left padding is a very annoying thing.

[thoennes]

Still nothing? This has been years, no?

[mocenigo]

It should not be difficult. The first change would be equivalent to adding

.monaco-editor .lines-content {
padding-left: 8px;
}

(or some configurable value) to "vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.css" – and then to make sure that any rulers/guides are also drawn shifted by 8px (or the configured value). I am sure that for the devs it should be trivial.

[dschil138]

@mocenigo would that solution allow the space to the left of the first character to be clickable? That is crucial. In the first post by @shujaatak, he seemed to say that this approach would work on a visual level, but not allow the user to click in that space to set the cursor at the start of the line, I think.

Is this something that can be accomplished by a 3rd party in a pull request or something like that? I'm not super familiar with how development on this project works.

EDIT: Drake can explain it better than I can

[mocenigo]

@mocenigo would that solution allow the space to the left of the first character to be clickable? That is crucial. In the first post by @shujaatak, he seemed to say that this approach would work on a visual level, but not allow the user to click in that space to set the cursor at the start of the line, I think.

Yes, It should be clickable. Note that you can already select whole lines by clicking (and dragging) on the line numbers in the gutter.

[yCodeTech]

Why is this not even assigned to a dev? If I knew who to tag, I would. Devs, chime in please. This needs accelerating to the next version!!!!

[gjsjohnmurray]

@yCodeTech there are other issues with more upvotes.

Here is a query to see them

is:issue is:open sort:reactions-+1-desc milestone:Backlog

[pmeaney]

@yCodeTech
@ @ @gjsjohnmurray Please use the link at bottom of this message to request that OpenTeams organize some corporate funding to be thrown at VS Code FOSS Devs on this, as it would result in the request receiving funding & increasing its priority ranking of the backlog.

OpenTeams is "a platform for open source maintainers and contributors to propose specific units of work that businesses can fund to accelerate open source technology roadmaps. This program helps to build a community of like-minded people who can work together to make open source projects better, ultimately leading to faster development and innovation." https://www.openteams.com/cooperative-funding/

@gjsjohnmurray I encourage you to please submit a case study as "Requesting Funding to Prioritize a highly requested but lower-prioritized VS Code feature" at https://www.openteams.com/create-a-case-study-and-profile/
Thanks!

[dschil138]

@gjsjohnmurray I think part of the reason it has fewer upvotes is 1). The initial request was worded a little confusingly & also kind of conflated two issues 2). the issue is over two years old, thus ranked very low chronologically.

There WAS a dev assigned to it, and it was even planned to be included for Oct 2021 updates, but then for some reason unassigned and never done.

[leafstrat]

Little hack since this was bugging me.
I'm using the Todo Tree extension, which gives me icons in the gutter, and I didn't like how they looked lacking "editor left padding".

Since I don't use the minimap, I thought maybe I could use it as a padding buffer, and it works perfectly.

editor_left_padding.webm

{
  // "editor left padding"
  "editor.minimap.enabled": true,
  "editor.minimap.autohide": true,
  "editor.minimap.side": "left",
  "editor.minimap.maxColumn": 6,
  // ---
  // gutter settings
  "editor.lineDecorationsWidth": 6,
  "editor.lineNumbers": false,
  "editor.folding": false,
  // ---
  // gutter styling
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
  "editorGutter.background": "#555"
  }, // ---
}

[dschil138]

@leafstrat can you click in there and have the cursor go to the beginning of that line?

[mocenigo]

Since I don't use the minimap, I thought maybe I could use it as a padding buffer, and it works perfectly.

It is nice but if the text is scrolled to the right, it disappears under the minimap, right? A proper padding would leave the text visible instrad.

[mocenigo]

I just saw the various "workaround" and I see that some make wrong assumpitons.
The padding on the left should be at the beginning of the rendered line. So if the first visible column is the first one, you have some spacing between the gutter and the text. If, however, the text is scrolled a bit, then you will see a fraction of text rendered in that padding space.

However if we add

.monaco-editor .lines-content {
padding-left: 8px;
}

to "vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.css"

then the vertical rulers defined by "editor.rulers" in settings.json will not be aligned with the text. In other words, these rulers should be also shifted by 8px. However, this does not happen with the .monaco-editor .lines-content hack.

In other words, it should work exactly as editor.padding.top / bottom

[dschil138]

@mocenigo sorry could you rephrase that, I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that you found a solution?

EDIT: just tried adding the style you included in the comment. It definitely solves the visual element. Unfortunately it appears to be Drake #2 from my meme, unclickable padding :/

I may be misunderstanding if that specific style was the solution that you were suggesting tho

[mocenigo]

@mocenigo sorry could you rephrase that, I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that you found a solution?

EDIT: just tried adding the style you included in the comment. It definitely solves the visual element. Unfortunately it appears to be Drake #2 from my meme, unclickable padding :/

I may be misunderstanding if that specific style was the solution that you were suggesting tho

Hi no, I did not find a solution, and my apologies for not answering earlier. That only adds some inactive space and doe not work well with vertical rulers.

I just discovered that there is an option called editor.letterSpacing and this adds spacing between characters in pixels and the vertical rulers work well. So, a parameter like editor.spacingBeforeFirstLetter ( or editor.spacingBeforeLine ) if implemented in the same way would probably work – in other words the changes could be made to the line rendering code instead of the buffer rendering code.

[dschil138]

I created a new issue in order to try and revive this old issue. If you still care about this please go give it your support!

[pmeaney]

Hi @dschil138 Thanks for actively pursuing this improvement!

Here's what I've gone with---

- To reclaim horizontal space:

these settings: #30795 (comment)

"editor.glyphMargin": false,
"editor.folding": false, // this will disable the vertical column-- therefore it disables minimizing code sections i.e. “folding”
"editor.lineNumbers": "off",
"workbench.activityBar.visible": false

- To reclaim vertical space:

Source 1: #174903 (comment)
Source 2: Similar / related: drcika/apc-extension#52 (comment)

1. install extension Apc Customize UI++
2. add these lines to your user settings.json:

"window.titleBarStyle": "native",
"apc.electron": {
   "titleBarStyle": "customButtonsOnHover",
},
"apc.header": {
   "height": 20
},
"apc.sidebar.titlebar": {
   "height": 20
},
"apc.activityBar": {
   "size": 77,
   "itemSize": 48,
   "itemMargin": 0
},
"apc.stylesheet": {
   ".custom-sidebar-titlebar .sidebar .composite.title": "padding-left: 0;", // Don't indent the sidebar title. We want it horizontally aligned to the left so that it makes a nice vertical column with the controls in the sidebar.
   ".custom-sidebar-titlebar .sidebar .composite.title .inline-titlebar-placeholder": "padding-left: 0 !important;", // Don't indent the sidebar title. Part 2 to remove the empty space to the left of the sidebar title and complete the proper horizontal left alignment.
   ".monaco-workbench .part.statusbar>.items-container>.statusbar-item.left.first-visible-item": "padding-left: 0;", // Don't indent the statusbar items. This horizontally aligns the statusbar items with the "Problems" header in the panel, which looks nice.
}, // END -- settings to hide top menu bar and other stylesheet polish

Example of Vertical space efficiency improvements:

Though the search bar becomes hidden with this improvement, all it takes is cmd-p (mac OS) to access it. I am quite glad to have found this improvement. I wish there was an "Optimize Horizontal Space Saving" and "Optimize Vertical Space Saving" feature within a category of "general user interface options" in VS Code Settings which would yield similar results.

[RichMorin]

Thanks for keeping this on the radar. I'll freely admit that I don't understand all of the CSS you posted, but I'm happy that you're trying...

[dschil138]

y'all gotta go comment on the new issue or this is never getting done. This is our last stand!

[Adam-Kay]

"editorGutter.background": "#555"

Exact same issue with TODO, but I'd prefer to keep the minimap. Any ideas on how to achieve it differently?

[MariuzM]

Damn 3 years passed still no editor.padding.left eh

[erdemdev]

Devs do something

[dschil138]

@MariuzM @erdemdev guys go leave comments on the new issue, commenting here won't help get this done.

[deflock]

Devs do something

Who needs those boring paddings when AI is now hype train. Choo-choo!🚂

[ajtompkins]

Just moving from notepad++ to vscode and how hard should it be to select the first character of a line? Not this hard.

[pmeaney]

Just moving from notepad++ to vscode and how hard should it be to select the first character of a line? Not this hard.

The issue has shifted to this one: #206914
thanks to @dschil138 . @ajtompkins if you comment on that issue I link above, we may get better traction there.