Whitespace colors should be more customizable.

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#320,304 0 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@hediet is already working on this.

Since Jun 8, 2026.

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This issue has not been assessed yet.

Description

With most dark themes, whitespace characters are barely visible. Currently, VS Code only allows a fixed foreground color to be specified for them.

I think it would be much more useful if VS Code allowed users to define both foreground and background colors, and also reference colors from the active theme, for example:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editorWhitespace.foreground": "editor.background",
    "editorWhitespace.background": "editor.foreground"
}

Alternatively, VS Code could support relative color adjustments based on the current theme colors, such as:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editorWhitespace.foreground": "darker(+30)",
    "editorWhitespace.background": "lighter(+25)"
}

This would make whitespace characters clearly visible regardless of the selected theme, without requiring users to manually configure colors for each theme they use.

A good example is shown in the screenshot:
Image

It would also be nice if more control characters were displayed.

Dominant language
TypeScript
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