How to Boost VS Code Performance in Monorepos by Excluding Large Folders

VS Code offers three distinct settings — files.exclude, search.exclude, and files.watcherExclude — that together significantly improve editor performance in monorepo projects. Configuring only one of these settings is insufficient; all three must be set in the workspace-level .vscode/settings.json file to see real gains. Folders like node_modules, dist, build, and .next should be excluded from the file watcher, which delivers the largest performance improvement by preventing VS Code from tracking unnecessary file changes. For very large monorepos, using a .code-workspace file to limit indexed folders to only those actively worked on provides an even greater speed boost. Linux users may additionally need to increase the inotify file-watcher limit via a system configuration command to avoid watcher warnings.