johnpapa/vscode-peacock

Peacock for Visual Studio Code

Subtly change the color of your Visual Studio Code workspace. Ideal when you have multiple VS Code instances, use VS Live Share, or use VS Code's Remote features, and you want to quickly identify your editor.

Read the extensive documentation here which includes a guide on how to use Peacock and a changelog

Install

1. Open Extensions sideBar panel in Visual Studio Code and choose the menu options for View → Extensions
2. Search for Peacock
3. Click Install
4. Click Reload, if required

Documentation

Read the extensive documentation here which includes a guide on how to use Peacock and a changelog

Quick Usage

Let's see Peacock in action!

1. Create/Open a VSCode Workspace (Peacock only works in a Workspace)
2. Press F1 to open the command palette
3. Type Peacock
4. Choose Peacock: Change to a favorite color
5. Choose one of the pre-defined colors and see how it changes your editor

Now enjoy exploring the rest of the features explained in the docs!

Works with Modern UI

Peacock works whether you're on VS Code's classic UI or the new Modern UI — same colors, same experience.

Classic UI	Modern UI

Resources

• Peacock docs on GitHub Pages
• Peacock on the VS Code Marketplace
• CI workflow (GitHub Actions)
• Docs workflow (GitHub Actions)
• MIT License
• Get VS Code
• Create your first VS Code extension
• VS Code Extension API
• Learn how to add WebPack bundles to your favorite extensions

Credits

Inspiration comes in many forms. These folks and teams have contributed either through ideas, issues, pull requests, or guidance. Thank you!

• The VS Code team and their incredibly helpful guide for creating extensions

• Here are some great examples for extensions from the VS Code team

Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct.

Contributing

The fastest way to contribute is with Copilot CLI — it knows this repo's conventions automatically:

copilot "Add a new command called 'Change to a Seasonal Color' that picks a color based on the current season"

Or contribute manually — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide:

1. Fork this repo and create a branch
2. npm install → make your changes → npm test
3. Open a PR

See AGENTS.md for the full project guide including architecture, patterns, and how to add commands/settings.

Problems or Suggestions

Open an issue here

workbench.experimental.modernUI compatibility was fixed upstream in VS Code and Peacock colors now apply normally with it enabled. See #652 for history.

Contributors

Contribution guidelines are located here

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

James Newell ⚠️	Julian 🤔	Oleg Solomka 💻 ⚠️	Joseph Rex 🎨	Sam Julien 🤔	Shayne Boyer 💻	Burke Holland 🤔
Jonathan Carter 💻	Ricardo Souza 💻	Kushal Pandya 💻	Erich Gamma ⚠️	Christian Nwamba 🤔	Matt Bierner 💻	Raymond Camden 🤔
Aaron Powell 🤔	tanhakabir 💻	Nate Drake 💻	Prateek Verma 💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!