Whenever I open a folder that I've already worked in, VSCode is clever and reopens it in the exact same layout I already had it. However, I have absolutely no clue how it does that - I can't find a config file or anything anywhere, which is something I'd love to have; in my specific usecase I create a lot of workspaces and they all have the same sort of structure, so if I could save that layout so I didn't have to recreate it every time it'd be great.
2 Answers
The answer ends up being super annoying... they're stored in %APPDATA%\Code\User\workspaceStorage in some hashed looking folder names, which contain a pretty useless workspace.json file (all workspaces) and all other info stored in a *.vscdb (and its associated *.backup file), which is a SQLite Format 3 file storing all that information. It's barely used as a database from what I can see, a json file could do just as well, but I digress...
tl;dr they're a pain to get out.
VSCode mainly saves all of the preferences and user choices in the settings.json file. Moreover, you can actually set your preferences in VSCode Settings. But if you want to copy/paste your workspace settings to different workspaces, I guess the best choice would be to look at your settings.json layout settings.
Go to File > Preferences and adding them in the right pane, in "User Settings" if you want to keep them for all workspaces or in "Workspace Settings" for this workspace only.
To see settings for layouts and explorer, search for
explorer.
You can read more about settings.json defaults and attributes exposed here
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