Color My Text

Color My Text lets you define text decoration rules for files that do not use a standard syntax, such as log files or to-do lists. Store the rules as workspace settings to share them with others who work on the same files.

Check out the extension on Visual Studio Marketplace.

To see it in action, clone this repository and open the example folder in Visual Studio Code. Install the 'Color My Text' extension when prompted.

Features

Live Text Decorations

Decorations apply as you type and update instantly when you change rules. You do not need to reopen files. Decorations work across multiple editor windows.

Tip: Open the file to decorate on one side and the settings file on the other. Changes appear live, so you can quickly test patterns and try different styles.

Configuration

Setting Structure

paths

List of file path patterns that this configuration applies to.

• Supports most glob-style patterns (same as .gitignore).
• Accepts absolute paths or paths relative to the workspace folder.
• Use forward slashes as path separators on all platforms.
• Avoid absolute paths in workspace settings files, since different users may have different folder structures.

rules

List of decoration rules to apply to the matched files.

patterns

List of regular expression patterns. Text matching any pattern gets the rule applied.

• Patterns support Unicode regular expressions.
• These are not wildcard patterns. Use Create\\w*Async instead of Create*Async.

matchCase

Set to true for case-sensitive matching. Default is case-insensitive.

multiLine

Set to true to allow patterns to match text across multiple lines. When enabled, . also matches newline characters. Default is false (single-line matching only).

Colors and Styles

color

Accepts one of sixteen ANSI color names or a custom hex color code.

ANSI color names: Black, Blue, BrightBlack, BrightBlue, BrightCyan, BrightGreen, BrightMagenta, BrightRed, BrightWhite, BrightYellow, Cyan, Green, Magenta, Red, White, Yellow.

ANSI colors adapt to the active color theme, ensuring good contrast regardless of the theme. Custom hex colors in #RGB, #RRGGBB, or #RRGGBBAA format are fixed and do not adapt to the theme.

bold

true to bold, false to remove bold. Omit to keep original font weight.

italic

true to italicize, false to remove italic. Omit to keep original font style.

underline

true to add underline, false to remove underline. Omit to keep original decoration.

strikeThrough

true to add strikethrough, false to remove strikethrough. Omit to keep original decoration.

Notes

• Each rule must specify at least one decoration property.
• Decorations apply on top of the existing color theme. For example, a rule that only sets italic: true will italicize text without changing its theme color.
• A file can match multiple configurations. All matching configurations apply.
• If text matches multiple rules, all decorations merge. If the same decoration (such as color) is set in multiple maching rules, the first one wins.

"rules": [
    { "patterns": ["brown fox jumps"], "bold": true },
    { "patterns": ["fox jumps over"], "strikeThrough": true },
    { "patterns": ["jumps over the"], "italic": true }
]

The text above produces:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Share Decorations

Store decoration rules in the workspace settings file (.vscode/settings.json) alongside your files. When you share the files through a version control system, others can use and contribute to the decoration rules.

Known Issues

These are minor issues caused by platform limitations.

• Minimap: Decorated text does not appear with its decoration colors in the minimap. This is a VS Code limitation.

• Underline and strikethrough conflict: If text matches two rules where one sets underline and the other sets strikeThrough, only the first rule applies. This is a CSS limitation.

• JSON schema validation error: While adding configuration, VS Code may show Missing Property "color". before you add any decoration property. Ignore it. The error disappears once you add any property.