How to turn off “matching” highlighting

Question

I don't want Visual Studio Code to highlight matching brackets, all occurrences of the same variable, etc. I find it very distracting. However, I can find no way to disable this feature.

The only highlight options I seem to be able to change are "editor.selectionHighlight" and "editor.renderLineHighlight", and neither work.

Is it possible to disable "matching highlighting"? Or maybe to edit my theme, so that the highlight color and highlight border are the same as the background color?

Answer 1

The same achievement from @Alex's answer could be done from the VSCode settings.

Go to Preferences -> Settings and there search for Highlight.
A lot of option would appear, but the ones useful would be under the Text Editor section. Also, you could decide if change it globally (through the User Settings) or just for that window (Workspace Settings).

Answer 2

I finally figured out how,

Try this one "editor.matchBrackets": false in your Preferences - User/Workspace setting

Hope it helps.

Answer 3

There are different types of highlighting:

1. Syntax highliting (place cursor inside variable)

"editor.occurrencesHighlight": false

2. Selection highlighting (similar chunks in document)

"editor.selectionHighlight": false

3. Matching brackets highlighting

"editor.matchBrackets": false

---

There's a second way - make them less obtrusive (or completely transparent):

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.selectionHighlightBackground": "#0000", // similar selection
    "editor.selectionHighlightBorder ": "#0000",

    "editor.wordHighlightStrongBackground": "#0000", // syntax variable assignment
    "editor.wordHighlightStrongBorder": "#0000",

    "editor.wordHighlightBackground": "#0000", // syntax variable
    "editor.wordHighlightBorder": "#0000",

    "editorBracketMatch.border": "#0000",// brackets
    "editorBracketMatch.background": "#0000",
}

Answer 4

Try going to Preferences-> User Settings
In the settings.json to the right add:

"editor.selectionHighlight": false