How I restored my deleted file in VSCode: A cool trick you should know 🔮

Hey there! Let me share a crazy experience I had recently. I was working on a lengthy piece of code in a new file in VSCode. After spending hours perfecting it, I accidentally deleted the file before committing it to Git. I only realized the mistake the next day. Total nightmare, right?

The Panic Moment

At first, I was in complete shock. I just stared at my screen, thinking, "Did that really just happen?". My heart started racing, and I felt this wave of panic wash over me. All that hard work, gone. Nothing in the Trash Bin. But then, I started googling whether it was possible to restore a deleted file from VSCode, and I found, to my surprise, a Stack Overflow question where someone in the comments suggested the following cool trick.

The lifesaver: Local History in VSCode

So, there's this feature in VSCode called "Local History: Find Entry to Restore." It basically keeps a history of your files locally, which means you can go back and restore previous versions even if you've deleted them! How cool is that!

How I got my file back

1. Open command palette

   • First, I opened the Command Palette by pressing Cmd+Shift+P

2. Find the local history command

   • Then, I pasted the phrase "Local History: Find Entry to Restore" in the Command Palette. It popped up in the list, so I pressed Enter.

3. Search for my deleted file

   • Next, it asked me to type the name of the file I deleted. I did, and to my happy surprise, my deleted file was there!

4. Choose the right version

   • After pressing Enter, I was presented with a list of snapshots of my file that VSCode remembered for me. I picked the most recent version and pressed Enter again.

5. Restore the file

   • Finally, just like that, VSCode restored the contents of my file! It was like magic! I was so happy. Then it sufficed to just save this file contents on my disk with the hotkey Cmd+S and I could commit it now with Git. 🎉

The Happy Ending

Seeing my code back on the screen was such a relief. I avoided a counter-productive big loss of my work. Not only did I get my work back, but I also learned a super useful trick that I'm now excited to share with you. I hope you'll never need to use it, but... it's better to be prepared 😉

Feel free to buy me a coffee 😉 ☕️👇 Thank you! 🤗

Comments

[Luca]

I created an account just to thank you.

I had an assignment with a controller file with over 500 lines of code, and I was helping my professor debug a PHP setup error and forgot to rename the dummy file. All my code was gone, I was devastated, went through total shock.

You saved my assignment, my time, and my mental health. Thank you for writing this, for sharing this. I wish the utter best for you.

[Krzysztof Platis]

I'm happy it worked for you! 🙌

[Laurent Ionesco]

It also works if you worked on a remote server. You opened files through Winscp, you edited them in VS Code (it opened and saved them in a temp directory). If something nasty happened on the server and you overwrote a file, you can recover it with the method here. Thanks Krzysztof!

[Krzysztof Platis]

Wow. Awesome you're sharing it! Thanks for info!

[Marx Miguel Escaño]

It's May 6, 2025, 12:30 AM. I got lost in the commands in Git Bash and accidentally removed my files. I couldn't even see them after relogging. I panicked and cried a little — I worked on this the whole day just for it to disappear. But I searched for a solution, and it worked! I have a project presentation at 2 PM, haha. Thanks you sir!

[Mo Rizwan]

i was very panic because mistakenly some important file overwritten in vs code. so that i had lost all important code from vs code file then after i searched many platform but did not find solution. then after long time i found write solution to retrieve our overwrite file/code. Now i have restored code so i fell very happy. thank you. live long

[Krzysztof Platis]

Happy to hear it helped! I can feel for you.
PS. If only you want, feel free to buy me a coffee 😉 buymeacoffee.com/krisplatis

[Noel Benitez Cruz]

Ive almost pooped a brick when .git ate up 6 months of hard work by replacing master with an ancient repo... I screamed , i cussed, broke stuff and had a hissy fit just to vent, but ai suggested that there were file caches for visual studio, one Google search later and im here... MANY MANY MANY MANY THANKS :3 ... also thanks Microsoft for Visual Studio, have I coded with nano the "1337" way I woudlnt have backups

[SenthilKumaranC]

I have lost of all my files. It got Permanently deleted. Unable to recover from anywhere.

Finally able to recover all files because of this post.

Thanks to you and also to my brother Arvind who pointed out this post.

Thanks to VS code team too.

[Richard May]

Thanks Krzysztof! Your post was a life saver!

I was moving a file from one directory/folder to another within the Solution Explorer view of VS Code, and my file completely disappeared without a trace. No history of it via MS Windows functions or commands (e.g. FileExplorer, Command prompt). It had just vanished! I'm not sure if this is a known bug in VS Code or not, or if anyone else had run across this issue!

Anyway, the file had not been committed to my github repository, yet, and I was very panicked to say the least. So I thought I would do a quick "Google" search, which I am glad I did, as it brought up your post!

After following your instructions, my file was restored!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

[Σπυρος]

Brother you saved my life I had weeks of work lost and thanks to this i recovered it, I couldnt believe it at first. I sincerely wish God always be with you and that everything in life will go the way you want it to.

[Alex Ilchenko]

I created an account just to thank you!

I'd been working on a project for about a week when I broke it with the wrong Git command. All my changes reset to the last commit. I panicked, almost died, couldn't sleep all night, and felt a pain in my body like a breakup. At 5 AM, I realized there must be some history beyond Git's.

Thanks a lot!

And thanks to the VS Code developers for including that feature. By the way, it could be improved, as well as git history as it can accidentally reset unstaged changes.
Nice to see comments from people who've rescued their life's work.

[J L]

Saw someone said you can just open the recycle bin and restore.
However, if your pc decided to crash during a file save on a hard drive failure, causing an empty file on reboot.
This has to be the only solution. Thank you.