Tab Behavior

When you open a table or view from the connections tree, DBCode opens it in a tab. By default it follows VS Code’s preview-tab convention: a single click opens the item in a tab that gets reused the next time you open something. Once you interact with the tab (apply a filter, sort, paginate, etc.) the tab is “locked” and won’t be reused.

If you’d rather every click open a fresh tab, you can change this with a setting.

The dbcode.tabPreview setting

Three values:

• inherit (default) - follows your VS Code setting workbench.editor.enablePreview. If you’ve turned VS Code’s preview tabs off, DBCode does the same for tables and views.
• enabled - always use preview tabs, even if VS Code’s preview is off.
• disabled - never use preview tabs. Every click opens a new tab.

Open the VS Code Settings UI and search for “tab preview” to find the setting under DBCode > General.

Auto-locking on interaction

When preview is on, DBCode locks the tab the moment you do any of the following, so your customizations stick around when you open the next table:

• Type in the WHERE filter input (even before you apply it)
• Apply a WHERE filter
• Sort by a column
• Apply or change a column filter
• Paginate to a different page
• Resize a column
• Reorder columns
• Scroll away from the top
• Edit a cell

Any of these mark the tab as “in use” and the next click in the connections tree opens a fresh tab rather than replacing this one.

Tip: Force a new tab

You can also force a new tab without changing the setting:

• Double-click the table in the connections tree. (Note: this also expands the tree node.)
• Or set workbench.list.openMode to doubleClick so single-clicks become navigation only and double-clicks open.

Why this exists

DBCode used to always open every table in a new tab, which led to a lot of tabs piling up if you were exploring schemas. The current behavior matches how VS Code handles file tabs: peek at things with single clicks, lock them in when you start working. The auto-lock triggers above ensure your in-progress work is never lost to a casual click on another table.