How to configure VS Code Bracket Pair Colors natively

cover image

With an update in August 2021, VS Code started supporting Bracket pair colorization natively. It means there is no need to use the Bracket Pair Colorizer extension (which I love).

In their official announcement, the VS Code team states they chose to implement this feature natively to address performance issues.

I recently uninstalled the extension and thought, let’s try to use the editor without any bracket color extension. I cannot. I’ve been using the extension as long as I remember and I cannot go back to plain, colorless brackets.

ss1

To enable this setting, open the settings.json file for the VS Code editor and add the following:

{
  // ...
  "editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editorBracketHighlight.foreground1": "#ffb86c",
    "editorBracketHighlight.foreground2": "#8be9fd",
    "editorBracketHighlight.foreground3": "#bd93f9",
    "editorBracketHighlight.foreground4": "#50fa7b",
    "editorBracketHighlight.foreground5": "#f1fa8c",
    "editorBracketHighlight.foreground6": "#abb2c0",
    "editorBracketHighlight.unexpectedBracket.foreground": "#ff5555"
  }
}

And tweak the colors according to your style!

ss2

By the way, the above colors are from Dracula theme’s 🧛‍♂️ color palette to match the overall editor theme I am currently using.