How do I stop VSCode from the Side Bar moving to the folder that the current file is in?

Question

In Visual Studio Code, whenever I close a file, the next open file becomes active in the editor and the Side Bar moves to that file's location in the folder structure. This is usually not the behavior I want. I often want to open another file in the same location as the one I just closed, but now my Side Bar has shifted around to what could be a totally different place in a large project.

I like the behavior of the main Visual Studio product where the Solution does not automatically shift. Instead, if I want to see where in the solution a file is, I can use a keyboard shortcut to move there ("Find File in Solution"), instead of automatically moving there every time the active file changes.

Is there any way to change/disable this functionality in VSCode?

Answer 1

The is an option explorer.autoReveal in settings (either user or workspace) which controls if the explorer should automatically reveal files when opening them.

1. Open VS User Settings (Preferences > User Settings). This will open two side-by-side documents.
2. Add a new "explorer.autoReveal": false setting to the User Settings document on the right if it's not already there. This is so you aren't editing the Default Setting directly, but instead adding to it.
3. Save the User Settings file.