Meaning of clock icon in VS Code source control

Question

What does it mean when a blue clock icon is displayed over the VS Code source control icon? When I run the git status command, I get the message: "nothing to commit, working tree clean." I checked the VS Studio documentation, but I couldn't find anything on this topic.

Answer 1

The clock is the "Progress Badge" which is visible while VS Code is getting repository info and status:

You can disable it in settings:

{ 
  // controls whether git actions should show progress
  "git.showProgress": true
}

Answer 2

• The clock icon is the progress marker, or 'VSCode is still working on this...' marker.
• The designer's expectation is that this would be a momentary notification, not a long one.
• When you open a new directory for the first time, but do not have a .gitignore set up, this means it wants to slurp your node_modules or directory of intermediate object files and such. This takes a long time, or forever if it crashes and restarts, and so you keep seeing the icon.
• Add a .gitignore file.
• Restart VS Code if necessary. If you still have trouble, consider sacrificing a live chicken over the CPU (reports say a Rhode Island Red works, but YMMV).

Answer 3

When you make a change to a file and then save, the clock icon appears for a second and then disappear. I think it reads the changes you did, and add the newly changed file under the source control, so if you click on that file, you can see the difference between the old and the new version. I believe, it compares the differences when you make any change to show you the correct status beside each file, like Modified, added, etc..