Recover files from VSCode file history

recover-vscode.js

// Find and recover the first/last entry from VSCode edit history

import fs from "fs-extra";
import os from "os";
import path from "path";

const recoverDir = "/path/to/recover"

// Path to search for history files
const prevRoot = "file://" + recoverDir;
// Path to save recovered files
const nextRoot = "./recovered";

// VSCode history directory
// TODO: make this cross-platform (currently only works on MacOS)
const historyDir = os.homedir() + "/Library/Application Support/Code/User/History";

// List of files found with prevRoot
const historyEntries = {};

// Read all edit history metadata files (entries.json)
await Promise.all(
  fs.readdirSync(historyDir).map(async (d) => {
    const file = `${historyDir}/${d}/entries.json`;
    if (!fs.existsSync(file)) return;
    const metadata = await fs.readJSON(file);
    if (metadata && metadata.resource.startsWith(prevRoot)) {
      historyEntries[d] = {
        ...metadata,
        entries: metadata.entries.sort((a, b) => a.timestamp - b.timestamp),
      };
    }
  })
);

console.log(`Found ${Object.keys(historyEntries).length} files with edit history:`);
console.log(
  Object.values(historyEntries)
    .map((e) => String(e.resource).substring(prevRoot.length))
    .sort()
    .join("\n")
);

// Copy last/first entries to nextRoot
await Promise.all(
  Object.entries(historyEntries).map(async ([fileId, { resource, entries }]) => {
    const getPathMap = (entry) => [
      path.join(historyDir, fileId, entry.id),
      path.join(nextRoot, resource.substring(prevRoot.length)),
    ];

    // find the last entry
    const [prevPath, nextPath] = getPathMap(entries.at(-1));

    // copy the last entry to current dir
    fs.copy(prevPath, nextPath, (err) => {
      if (err) console.error(`Error copying ${prevPath} -> ${nextPath}:`, err);
    });

    // check whether there is more then 1 entry
    if (entries.length <= 1) return;

    // find the first entry (intial state)
    let [prevPathInit, nextPathInit] = getPathMap(entries.at(0));

    // check whether the file has any content
    const stats = fs.statSync(prevPathInit);
    if (stats.size === 0) return;

    const parsed = path.parse(nextPathInit);
    nextPathInit = path.join(parsed.dir, parsed.name + "_init" + parsed.ext);

    fs.copy(prevPathInit, nextPathInit, (err) => {
      if (err) console.error(`Error copying ${prevPathInit} -> ${nextPathInit}:`, err);
    });
  })
);

recover-vscode.md

Recover files from VSCode file history

Did you just rm -rf ./code? If you use VSCode, you are in the right place to recover your code. (don't ask why I wrote this script)

Edit the recoverDir in the script below, and run node ./recover.js and your files will be copied with the original folder structure.

You will need Node and npm install fs-extra. The script is only tested on MacOS.