Change highlight text color in Visual Studio Code

Right now, it is a faint gray overlay, which is hard to see. Any way to change the default color?

Add the following lines into "Editor: Token Color Customizations" setting, inside settings.json file.

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.selectionBackground": "#135564",
    "editor.selectionHighlightBackground": "#135564"
},

See Theme Color Reference for more options

The above answers cover the Selected text and areas with same content as selection, but they miss the Current Search Match and Other Search Matches -- which have the same problem.

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.findMatchBackground": "#00cc44a8", //Current SEARCH MATCH
    "editor.findMatchHighlightBackground": "#ff7b00a1" //Other SEARCH MATCHES
}

Note that the above settings will also affect the colors when using Change All Occurrences CtrlF2 (a super-useful command that intelligently selects all occurrences of a string, placing cursors at each location for multiple-instance editing).

UPDATEs:

For those using the popular extension Numbered Bookmarks - you can now change the background color of bookmarked lines - makes it über-easy to notice them. (Have you ever wanted a way to temporarily mark line(s) in your code, as with a highlighter on paper?) Add this line to your settings.json (also under workbench.colorCustomizations):

        "numberedBookmarks.lineBackground": "#007700"

And don't miss Henry Zhu's useful tip here. I added Henry's tip to the settings above, and find the overall effect improved. (Henry's tip is not included within this answer - please click the link to read Henry's additional tip)

Tom Mai adds via a comment:

> Make sure both colors for editor.findMatchBackground and editor.findMatchHighlightBackground have transparency (or have some alpha values), in order for editor.selectionBackground and editor.selectionHighlightBackground to show through the searches. You can keep both colors, editor.selectionBackground and editor.selectionHighlightBackground, non-transparent (without alpha values) to an extent, and it works flawlessly

---

Example of a typical settings file, post mod:

{
"git.enableSmartCommit": true,
"git.autofetch": true,
"breadcrumbs.enabled": true,
"git.confirmSync": false,
"explorer.confirmDelete": false,
"code-runner.saveFileBeforeRun": true,
"code-runner.saveAllFilesBeforeRun": true,
"workbench.activityBar.visible": true,
"files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true,
"telemetry.enableTelemetry": false,
"scm.providers.visible": 0, //0 allows manual resize of the Source Control panels
"editor.renameOnType": true, //Added Aug 2020: renames matching HTML tags
"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
"editor.selectionBackground": "#e788ff7c", //Currently SELECTED text
"editor.selectionHighlightBackground": "#ff00005b", //Same content as selection
"editor.findMatchBackground": "#00cc44a8", //Current SEARCH MATCH
"editor.findMatchHighlightBackground": "#ff7b00a1", //Other SEARCH MATCHES
"numberedBookmarks.lineBackground": "#007700"
//Henry's tip goes here... (don't forget to add comma to line above)
}
}

---

Where to find the settings.json file:

Depending on your platform, the user settings file is located here:

Windows %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json
macOS $HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User/settings.json
Linux $HOME/.config/Code/User/settings.json

ALTERNATE method to open the settings.json file:

1. Ctrl + , (comma) to open Settings

2. Workbench

3. Settings Editor

4. In the search box at top, paste-in workbench.colorCustomizations

5. On the left, click Workbench and then Appearance

6. Click the link to right: Edit in settings.json

References:

https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/theme-color#editor-colors

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/themes#_customize-a-color-theme

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/settings

If anyone finds this and, like me, was unable to get the above config working try doing this.

1. go to file > Preferences > settings
2. type in the search Editor token color customizations
3. under the Editor token color customizations header
4. click on edit in settings.json
5. on the right hand column select user settings
6. paste this into the json object

Be sure to replace the #'s with colors you want to see.

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.lineHighlightBackground": "#<color1>",
    "editor.selectionBackground": "#<color2>",
    "editor.selectionHighlightBackground": "#<color3>",
    "editor.wordHighlightBackground": "#<color4>",
    "editorCursor.foreground": "#<color5>"
},

My understanding of the above config.

editor.lineHighlightBackground - when you click on a line this is the color the line background will be.

"editor.selectionBackground" - The background of the word you have selected with your cursor.

"editor.selectionHighlightBackground" - This is the background of selections elsewhere in the file which matches the word you have selected with your cursor. Think of a variable named foo and it's used all over a file. You then select one 'foo' with your cursor, and all the other 'foo' on the page will be of the color specified in this variable.

"editor.wordHighlightBackground" - This is the color of selected text if the default highlight word on click does not take effect. I've only seen this value make a difference if you click on a word that does not auto-select.

editorCursor.foreground - this is the color of your cursor.

As I have tested, setting border color makes it easier to read than setting background color, which is what Sublime Text does.

For example, add these lines in settings.json:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.selectionHighlightBorder": "#FFFA",
},

Selected words will be displayed like this:

you can change it with your favorite color by:

Steps

1. Open visual code
2. Goto file menu
3. Preferences -> Settings

after open settings you will update your setting on your right side column, copy and paste this code inside the main brackets { ... }

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.selectionBackground": "#f00", // red hexadecimal code
    "editor.selectionHighlightBackground": "#fff" // white hex code
},

Update See @Jakub Zawiślak's answer for VScode 1.12+

---

Old answer

Visual Studio Code calls this selection highlighting and unfortunately, I don't think the color is customizable currently. Themes can control the 'selection' color, but the 'selection highlight' color is hardcoded.

See this issue tracking a possible solution: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1636

(As a side note, you can toggle this feature or/off with the editor.selectionHighlight setting.)

If anyone found themselves reading @FujiRoyale's answer as none of the others worked, and wondered why his/her's also didn't work, but as it was more recent wondered why, I followed their answer, and had (with v1.18 of vscode) this as a user settings setup:

{
    // Is git enabled
    "git.enabled": true,
    // Path to the git executable
    "git.path": "C:\\Users\\t606964\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Git\\mingw64\\bin\\git.exe",
    "workbench.startupEditor": "newUntitledFile",
    // other settings
    //
    "editor.fontSize": 12,
    "editor.tabSize": 2,
    "git.confirmSync": false,
    "workbench.colorTheme": "Monokai",
    "editor.fontWeight": "bold",
    "editor.formatOnSave": true,
    "editor.formatOnPaste": true,
    "workbench.iconTheme": "vscode-icons",
    "explorer.confirmDelete": false,
    "files.autoSave": "off",
    "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        "editor.lineHighlightBackground": "#f00",
        "editor.selectionBackground": "#0f0",
        "editor.wordHighlightBackground": "#00f",
        "editorCursor.foreground": "#ff0"
    }
}

Note the indentation and commas and removal of double quotes from their answer (which I had to play with to get it right, which wasn't that clear from the answer). There should be no need to restart vscode, but it may be worth going to File > Autosave and see if you start getting primary colour highlights. And then choose better colours for your highlights.

You can also make this work in workspace settings by pasting

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.lineHighlightBackground": "#f00",
    "editor.selectionBackground": "#0f0",
    "editor.wordHighlightBackground": "#00f",
    "editorCursor.foreground": "#ff0"
}

in between the existing {} in that right-hand settings pane.

Have you tried using/adding extension Text Marker (Highlighter) by Ryuichi Inagaki ??

You can select/highlight a selection block, right click Toggle highlight to give it a unique color, then continue and repeat with other selection blocks, giving them each different distinct colors which I find most useful!