Color Code Your VS Code & Cursor Windows

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Free Tool Available

Don’t want to pick colors manually? I built a tool that generates a complete color scheme from a single accent color.

Try the Color Generator →

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If you’re like me, you often have multiple VS Code or Cursor windows open at once — one for the frontend, one for the backend, maybe one for documentation. The problem? They all look identical, and you end up playing window roulette every time you Cmd+Tab.

The fix is simple: give each project its own color scheme.

Works for Both VS Code and Cursor

Since Cursor is a fork of VS Code, they share the same settings format. Everything in this guide works identically for both editors.

How to Add Custom Colors

1. Open your project in VS Code or Cursor
2. Press Cmd+Shift+P (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux)
3. Search for “Open Workspace Settings (JSON)”
4. Add the color customizations

What You Can Customize

The workbench.colorCustomizations setting lets you change colors for:

• Title bar — The top bar showing the window title
• Activity bar — The leftmost sidebar with icons
• Status bar — The bottom bar showing branch, errors, etc.
• Sidebar — The file explorer area
• Tabs — The file tab bar

Example Configuration

Here’s a yellow theme that makes a window instantly recognizable:

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#F5C518",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#1a1a1a",
    "activityBar.background": "#D4A912",
    "activityBar.foreground": "#1a1a1a",
    "statusBar.background": "#B8940F",
    "statusBar.foreground": "#1a1a1a",
    "sideBar.background": "#FDF6E3",
    "tab.activeBackground": "#F5C518"
  }
}

Generate Your Own Color Scheme

Rather than manually picking colors and hoping they look good together, I built a tool that generates a complete, harmonious color scheme from a single accent color.

Try the VS Code & Cursor Color Generator →

Pick your primary color, and it’ll generate all the complementary shades for title bar, activity bar, status bar, and more — ready to copy and paste into your settings.