Choose folders to be ignored during search in VS Code

Question

Right now when I use ⌘+O to search for files, the fuzzy matching appears to operate over all files in the current project. Unfortunately, this includes

Answer 1

Update April 2018

You can do this in the search section of vscode by pre-fixing an exclamation mark to each folder or file you want to exclude.

Answer 2

After you setup the search.exclude and file.exclude mentioned on the previous answers, run the command "Clear Editor History" (Use the Command Palette to do that - CTRL + SHIFT + P).

Only after that the excluded files will not appear on your quick open menu.

Update: You can run the command "Clear Command History" too. I forgot about that.

Answer 3

Make sure the 'Use Exclude Settings and Ignore Files' cog is selected

Answer 4

If I understand correctly you want to exclude files from the vscode fuzzy finder. If that is the case, I am guessing the above answers are for older versions of vscode. What worked for me is adding:

"files.exclude": {
    "**/directory-you-want-to-exclude": true,
    "**/.git": true,
    "**/.svn": true,
    "**/.hg": true,
    "**/CVS": true,
    "**/.DS_Store": true
}

to my settings.json. This file can be opened through File>Preferences>Settings

Answer 5

This answer is outdated

If these are folders you want to ignore in a certain workspace, you can go to:

AppMenu > Preferences > Workspace Settings

Otherwise, if you want these folders to be ignored in all your workspaces, go to:

AppMenu > Preferences > User Settings

and add the following to your configuration:

//-------- Search configuration --------

// The folders to exclude when doing a full text search in the workspace.
"search.excludeFolders": [
    ".git",
    "node_modules",
    "bower_components",
    "path/to/other/folder/to/exclude"
],

The difference between workspace and user settings is explained in the customization docs

Answer 6

Extending the most voted answer, now there is an extension to achieve what is described there to toggle quickly in a GUI way. It's called Explorer Exclude. You can install this with this command:

ext install RedVanWorkshop.explorer-exclude-vscode-extension

Demo: