Vscode: Setting to Disable Split Editor on Drag and Drop

[karlhorky]

I use drag and drop a lot to move files among different columns, but never to split the editor into more columns or rows. When moving quickly, I accidentally split the editor a lot, and it slows me down and takes me out of flow. I posit that there are other users that are like this as well.

I would like a setting that disables the behavior of splitting of the panes completely. The behavior I'd like to disable is illustrated in this gif from the docs:

Keywords for search:

panes, panels, tabs, grid

Similar issues: #52063

[JacobDB]

I'd really like this too, this is extremely annoying to me.

[Bwin4L]

Agreed, would definitely love an option that disables this behavior.
It happens to me a lot when dragging and dropping files from the Windows Explorer into VSCode.

[difosfor]

Using a Wacom tablet also results in these annoying accidental splits. Sometimes when I click on a tab it accidentally becomes a tiny drag movement resulting in VS Code immediately splitting the editor and me being startled and having to drag the tab all the way back in with the others in the right place.

[SaschaWillems]

I second this. Most of the time I'm splitting editor windows even though I don't want to. Instead of just quickly dropping files into the IDE, you now have to carefully drop them in the center to not split the editor. An option to disable this would be great.

[Slaaaap]

Hey, try this if your workspace seems to be too large, it worked for me :

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p

I had this problem because my workspace had too many files and VSCode couldn't watch all of them.

[alexey4453]

They just must implement it.

[vscodebot[bot]]

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!

[difosfor]

So.. What is this "community" and "upvote" the bot is talking about?

[alexey4453]

VSCODE team needs 20 likes to put the request in process. If 12 members of github upvote it in 60 days, we'll see the option in Visual Code one day.

[difosfor]

Still not entirely clear to me who is liking what and where/how exactly. Can I like it as a Github user? Or only members of the VSCODE team?

[karlhorky]

I am assuming by "community" they mean the public (users on GitHub). The "upvotes" I'm assuming to be 👍 emojis on the issue description (8 of them right now):

I'm assuming these two things based on previous feature request voting behaviors I've seen in other projects.

[vscodebot[bot]]

:slightly_smiling_face: 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!

[tringuyen-yw]

I wonder how to categorize this "drag-drop to split screen": is it a design feature or a bug? Personally I find this very annoying, I would consider this as a bug. Would like to add my vote to either remove this unfortunate feature or give a setting to disable it.

[q2apro]

When is this setting coming? The implementation seems pretty basic.

And I think, btw, it should be disabled by default. Most of the developers I work with do not use split screens when they code.

[ithinkandicode]

I happened across this thread trying to find a fix. Glad to see it's in the backlog, it's been an unintuitive feature for ages. I've used it intentionally maybe once, but accidentally dozens of times.

[q2apro]

This "feature" is completely annoying, I am not a sniper to pin point my drag and drop. I just drop onto the window and expect the file opening in full screen. ... about, yes, 100 % of the cases.

Please add an option to disable this. Thanks a lot. 😀

[bpasero]

Added a new setting workbench.editor.splitOnDragAndDrop to control this. I also added a way to toggle this conditionally during the drag and drop operation when you press and hold Shift key (macOS) or Alt key (Windows, Linux).

[karlhorky]

Thanks @bpasero, cool! And nice touch with the modifier key too :)

[q2apro]

I hope it is deployed with the next VSCode update. 👍 Thanks a lot. Now VSCode feels just perfect.

[bpasero]

Yes it should be out in tomorrows insider and then I am happy for feedback how it goes. You can give our preview releases a try from: https://code.visualstudio.com/insiders/

[github-actions[bot]]

This bug has been fixed in to the latest release of VS Code Insiders!

@karlhorky, you can help us out by confirming things are working as expected in the latest Insiders release. If things look good, please leave a comment with the text /verified to let us know. If not, please ensure you're on version 65f805d98e798b979901b74d4c8810c05455b792 of Insiders (today's or later - you can use Help: About in the command pallete to check), and leave a comment letting us know what isn't working as expected.

Happy Coding!

[karlhorky]

/verified

[tringuyen-yw]

@bpasero thanks very much for the fix. Is the workbench.editor.splitOnDragAndDrop setting set to false by default? If not can you make it so to help the newcomers to VSCode, avoiding the confusion cause by this sscren split bug?

[q2apro]

Even with the latest VSCode 1.51.1 (2020-11-17) workbench.editor.splitOnDragAndDrop is not as a setting included. :/

[bpasero]

@q2apro you are using the wrong version of VSCode, the correct one to use from now on and never worry again is VSCode Insiders: https://code.visualstudio.com/insiders/