DEV Community

Cover image for Sparky's Tool Tips: "Favorite Documents" Visual Studio extension
Brian Schroer
Brian Schroer

Posted on • Updated on

Sparky's Tool Tips: "Favorite Documents" Visual Studio extension

When you're working with a Visual Studio solution, even if it contains multiple projects and dozens of files, you usually spend most of your time working with a handful of documents.

The Favorite Documents Visual Studio 2019 extension adds a "Favorite Documents" menu to Visual Studio to make it easy to get to them.

When you're working with a file that you want to get back to easily later, just click the "Favorite Documents" toolbar's "⭐" icon:

Favorite Documents

...and click the popup dialog's "Add" button to add it to the favorites menu:

Favorite Documents menu with file added

In this screenshot, I've added several favorite documents:

Favorite Documents menu with multiple files

The second, "eight-pointed star" icon adds all open documents to your Favorite Documents, and the third icon can be used to add external documents.

Favorites are "remembered", so if you close a solution and come back to it later, the favorites will still be there.

By default, favorites are "Solution-specific" - they're tied to the solution's folder, so if you open another branch of the same solution you won't see the favorites.

If you don't check the "Solution-specific" checkbox when adding, the favorites are relative to the solution root, so they work across multiple branches. Here are my cross-solution favorites:

Favorite Documents menu with cross-solution favorites

Two things I'd like to point out in the screenshot above:

  • You can add Source Control Explorer links as favorites
  • You can organize favorites in folders

The last icon on the Favorite Documents toolbar brings up the "Organize Favorites" window:

Top comments (0)