tl;dr: I can’t find if there is an entry for “is secondary side bar active or not” in vscode.workspace.getConfiguration(). I want to be able to programmatically check if it’s active.

why and what I did:

I’m a Mac user and want to use native window tabs for VSC. I find them generally preferable, but since VSC doesn’t have control over window decoration anymore, it lacks my favorite button there: secondary status bar toggle.

I know about ⌥⌘B shortcut but I still want a button, don’t judge. I don’t want to use custom title bar either because having two titlebars is weird.

So, I’ve decided to create an extension that puts a button in status bar that calls workbench.action.toggleAuxiliaryBar when clicked. I also want to update the icon (just the same way I had it in vscode’s window title bar)

I have this piece of code that should do the thing:

function updateStatusBarItem() {
  const secSideBarConfig = vscode.workspace.getConfiguration("workbench").get("???")

  const isSidebarVisible = // ??? 
  statusBarItem.text = isSidebarVisible
    ? "$(layout-sidebar-right)"
    : "$(layout-sidebar-right-off)";
  
  statusBarItem.show();
}

But I can’t find it in getConfiguration("workbench"), only main sidebar. I don’t see anything regarding it in settings menu. What’s up with that?

I also need to call this update function when user clicks on a button or toggles secondary side bar some other way. Most reliable way to do this is to listen for configuration changes, like this:

context.subscriptions.push(
  vscode.workspace.onDidChangeConfiguration((e) => {
    if (e.affectsConfiguration("???")) {
      updateStatusBarItem();
    }
  })
);

but again, I don’t know the config key or if there is a key for it.

I guess right now my only option is to deal with it and use the keyboard shortcut.