How to collapse sub-folders when a folder is closed in VS Code?

Question

When I collapse a folder, I want the sub-folder to be collapsed as well. Right now when I collapse a folder and re-open it, the sub-folders stay as they were while the folder was being closed. I want the behaviour where collapsing the folder also collapses the sub-folders.

Answer 1

You can Alt+Click a folder to recursively expand or collapse it. There is an issue (currently in community voting phase) to allow setting this behavior as a default.

Answer 2

The new 1.42 (Q1 2020) VSCode might help:

Two-step collapse in multi-root Explorer

When you are using a multi-root workspace, the Collapse Folder button in the File Explorer now has a two-step behavior, where:

• the first click will collapse all folders within each top-level, and
• the second click will collapse the top-level folders.

The Search view already has this behavior.