Why does VS Code allow only closing editors to the Right, but not to the left?

Question

Why does VS Code allow only closing editors to the Right, but not to the left?

If one right-clicks an opened document tab in VS Code, then there will be an option to close all the tabs to the right, but not to the left. Why?

Answer 1

As to why this is I'm not exactly sure, Microsoft responded to a feature request posted in 2018 stating that they "try to keep VS Code lean" so perhaps they wanted to cut down on the number of items in that menu and didn't think it was useful enough to warrant having another menu item for this.

However, as of 2022, there are a couple of ways to get around this:

• Press F1, search something like "close left" and select "Close Editors to the Left in Group" command.
• Install this extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ctf0.close-tabs-to-the-left - this adds a menu item which simply executes the command in the first point.