Using Buttons

Buttons has two tabs and can be opened in two places. Everything stays in sync, so you can use both surfaces at once.

Two ways to open it

Activity Bar — click the Buttons icon in the left Activity Bar for a compact sidebar.
Editor panel — click the Buttons icon in the editor title bar (top-right, near “split editor”) for a full-width editor tab.

The sidebar renders each button as a compact card (command and note on one row, actions on the next). The editor panel renders the full table: Command | Note | Actions.

The Buttons tab

The default tab shows two sections:

Project buttons — commands from the current workspace’s <workspace root>/.buttons.json.
Global buttons — commands from your personal ~/.buttons.json, shown in every project.

Each row (or card, in the sidebar) shows the command, an optional note, a file badge for script buttons, and the action buttons described below.

The Project scripts tab

A list of every discovered script. Checking a box adds it as a project button; unchecking removes it. Changes are saved immediately once the file exists.

Before you Generate a file, the boxes are disabled (there’s nothing to edit yet) and a Generate buttons file call-to-action is shown.

Run, copy, and manage

Every button gives you:

Run — run in the current integrated terminal (reusing the active terminal if one is open, otherwise a terminal named Buttons).
New Terminal — run in a fresh terminal named Buttons: <label>.
Copy — copy the exact command to the clipboard.
Note / Edit — inline-edit the note (for script buttons) or the command and note (for custom commands).
✕ — remove the button.

Script buttons with a missing reference (the script no longer exists in the scan) are shown but cannot be run. See Troubleshooting.

Configurable text size

Set the UI text size to VS Code default, +2px, or +4px via buttons.textSize — or click the gear icon in the panel header to jump straight to the setting. See Configuration.

To add a command that isn’t in a script file, see Custom commands.