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 😉

If you really feel like buying me a coffee

... then feel free to do it. Many thanks! 🙌