https://weberdominik.com/blog/vscode-vertical-tabs/

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Vertical tabs in Visual Studio Code

June 25, 2022

I love vertical tabs. I use them wherever possible. Mostly in my
browser (Firefox) and the IDEs I use.

For years I tried to have the same in VS Code too, but couldn't find
a way. And now, finally, I found one.

It's actually quite easy.

First make sure that View->Appearance->Show secondary side bar is
checked.

[1]

Then drag Open Editors to the secondary sidebar.

[2]

That's it. Now the open files are separated from the folder
structure.

Now there's only one minor improvement, hiding the tabs on top.

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P) and go to Preferences:
Open Settings (JSON).

There add "workbench.editor.showTabs": false.

Another improvement I found helpful is increasing the indent in the
file structure. By default it's too small for me.
To do that add "workbench.tree.indent": 20, or whatever value works
for you.

That's it. Here's the end result:

[3]

(c) 2023 Dominik Weber