Simple Blame

A simple, lightweight VS Code extension to toggle a whole-file Git blame view directly in your editor. Instantly see who last edited every line of a file without leaving your code or needing a complex side panel.

(Image: Toggling blame on, hovering for details, and toggling off)

Features

Simple Blame is designed to be unobtrusive and easy to use.

• Toggleable Blame View: Turn the blame annotations on or off with a single click. You can use:

  • The Blame: ON/OFF button in the status bar.
  • The command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P) and search for "Simple Blame: Toggle Inline Blame".

• Inline Annotations: When enabled, blame information is shown to the left of each line of code in a clean [commit] [author] [date] format.

• Detailed Hover Information: Hover over any blame annotation to see the full commit details, including the complete commit message, author email, and full commit hash.

• Automatic Updates: The blame view automatically updates when you switch to a new file or save changes to the current file.

• Lightweight: The extension is activated on command and does nothing when the blame view is off, ensuring it uses zero resources in the background.

Requirements

For the extension to work, you must have the following:

1. Git installed on your system and available in your system's PATH.
2. The file you are viewing must be inside a Git repository.
3. The file must be committed. The extension cannot show blame information for new, uncommitted files.

Extension Settings

This extension does not contribute any settings. It is configured entirely through the toggle command.

Known Issues

• Performance on very large files: Running git blame on files with hundreds of thousands of lines may take a moment to process. The editor will remain responsive while the command runs in the background.
• Binary files: The extension is not designed to work on binary files and will not show blame information for them.

Please report any other issues on the GitHub repository issues page.

Release Notes

1.0.0

Initial release of Simple Blame.

• Added whole-file blame view.
• Added toggle command in the Command Palette.
• Added clickable status bar item to show state and toggle blame.
• Added detailed hover information for each line.

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Enjoy!