Keep several sets of VS Code settings on hand and flip between them from the Command Palette — without opening settings.json and editing by hand. Groups can live in your global User Settings or in the settings of the workspace you currently have open.

Unlike most settings-switching extensions, this one is packaged as a web extension, so it works in a browser tab on vscode.dev and github.dev, not just on the desktop.

Attribution

This project began as a fork of Settings on 🔥! by Eric Biewener, used under the MIT license. It has since been rebranded and reworked — the browser build, the recursive merge behaviour, the alternate state keys, and the esbuild pipeline are additions made in this fork. The original project remains available under its own name and is not affiliated with this one.

Usage

Run Toggle Setting Group from the Command Palette. You get a picker listing every group you have defined, along with the state each one will move to if you select it. Pick one, and the settings in that block are written to your configuration. Groups start out in the off state.

Configuration

Define your groups under settingsToggle.groups:

"settingsToggle.groups": {
  "Color Theme": {
    "on": {
      "workbench.colorTheme": "Ayu Mirage"
    },
    "off": {
      "workbench.colorTheme": "Ayu Light"
    }
  },
  "Tests": {
    "on": {
      "files.exclude": {
        "**/__tests__": false,
        "**/*.spec.js": false
      }
    },
    "off": {
      "files.exclude": {
        "**/__tests__": true,
        "**/*.spec.js": true
      }
    }
  }
}

on and off may also be spelled turn_on and turn_off, whichever reads better to you.

Labels

Add a _label key to a state block to control the text shown beside the group name in the picker:

"settingsToggle.groups": {
  "Color Theme": {
    "on": {
      "_label": "Dark",
      "workbench.colorTheme": "Ayu Mirage"
    },
    "off": {
      "_label": "Light",
      "workbench.colorTheme": "Ayu Light"
    }
  }
}

How values are written

A value that is a plain object is merged into whatever is already configured, recursively — so two groups that both write into workbench.editorAssociations will stack rather than clobber each other. Arrays and scalar values simply replace what was there before.

Where it runs

The command relies only on the core VS Code configuration API, so behaviour is the same in the browser, on the desktop, and in Remote-SSH, WSL and Dev Container workspaces.