Highlight Parent Folders in Explorer Tree for Active File

[kenn]

When a file is selected in the Explorer, only the file itself is highlighted. This makes it difficult to quickly identify the parent folder structure — especially in deeply nested trees.

Example:

app/
  routes/
    auth/
      login
      logout
      signup
    home/
    * index ← only this file is highlighted

It would be much clearer if all ancestor folders were visually highlighted (or styled differently) to reflect the currently active file path:

* app/
  * routes/
      auth/
        login
        logout
        signup
    * home/
      * index

Benefits:

• Improves navigation clarity in large projects
• Reduces cognitive load when switching between files
• Makes the current context obvious at a glance

Possible Implementations:

• Add a setting like "explorer.highlightActiveFileAncestors": true
• Allow customization via theme tokens (e.g. explorer.ancestorFolderHighlight)
• Reuse the breadcrumb logic to track and apply styling

Notes:

Breadcrumbs do help, but they're separate from the Explorer and easy to overlook. This change would provide a more intuitive, visual cue directly in the tree.

Would love to see this added — thanks for the great work on VS Code!

[lramos15]

Does the tree sticky scroll help here?

[vs-code-engineering]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[RedCMD]

@lramos15
Sticky scroll doesn't target the active file
it only helps with any parent folders offscreen
but the on screen folder structure could still be a mess
and your assuming the active file is even visible

and there can be multiple ways to get to the active file
this feature should highlight all of them

all the code for it is already there
as if you create an error in a file, vscode will mark all of its parent folders with red/error icon

[vs-code-engineering]

🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!