Vscode quick open settings recency

VSCode: Order files in Quick Open by recency

Simon Heimlicher
September 9, 2023
2 min read
VSCode Settings

VSCode offers a practical menu to quickly open files that have been opened recently or that are found in the current workspace based on typing a few characters of the file name.

You can open this file by hitting ⌘-P on your Mac or Ctrl-P on Windows and Linux.

Vscode quick open settings default
By default, VSCode lists recently opened files alphabetically

You can change this setting from the default value of default to recency.

Vscode quick open settings recency
By changing the value of search.quickOpen.history.filterSortOrder to recency, we get VSCode to list recently opened files by recency
  1. Type ⌘-K on your Mac or Ctrl-K on Windows and Linux
  2. Enter Search:Quick Open:History:Filter Sort Order into the search field
  3. Use the dropdown menu beneath Controls sorting order of editor history in quick open when filtering and set it to recency.

If you prefer to edit the settings.json directly, add the key–value pair search.quickOpen.history.filterSortOrder and set it to recency under the root-level key settings,

You can also add the below snippet to your workspace or folder settings.

1"settings": {
2    "search.quickOpen.history.filterSortOrder": "recency"
3}
Save this as project.code-workspace

This setting was introduced via this feature request on GitHub regarding the inconsistent ordering of recently opened files in the Quick Open menu. I have no idea why the VSCode developers decided to keep the default setting other than backward compatibility.