Enhanced colorization

The Visual Studio Code C/C++ extension now supports semantic colorization, when IntelliSense is enabled. Use of enhanced colorization is controlled by the C_Cpp.enhancedColorization setting. This setting is enabled by default.

"C_Cpp.enhancedColorization": "Enabled"

Themes

Colors can be associated using the existing support for theming and color customization in VS Code. See the VS Code Themes documentation for more information.

Colors are associated with TextMate scopes.

Many of the tokens recognized by IntelliSense do not directly map to existing scopes in VS Code's default C/C++ TextMate grammar, so are likely not colored by existing VS Code themes.

C/C++ Themes Extension

We've created a set of VS Code themes that closely resemble the default Light and Dark themes in Visual Studio, and include colors for semantic tokens. These themes can be found here.

IntelliSense Tokens and Scopes

Token	Scope
Class Template	entity.name.type.class.templated
Enumerator	variable.other.enummember
Event (C++/CLI)	variable.other.event
Function	entity.name.function
Function Template	entity.name.function.templated
Generic Type (C++/CLI)	entity.name.type.class.generic
Global Variable	variable.other.global
Label	entity.name.label
Local Variable	variable.other.local
Macro	entity.name.function.preprocessor
Member Field	variable.other.property
Member Function	entity.name.function.member
Namespace	entity.name.namespace
New / Delete	keyword.operator.new
Operator Overload Function	entity.name.function.operator
Operator Overload Member	entity.name.function.operator.member
Parameter	variable.parameter
Property (C++/CLI)	variable.other.property.cli
Reference Type (C++/CLI)	entity.name.type.class.reference
Static Member Field	variable.other.property.static
Static Member Function	entity.name.function.member.static
Type	entity.name.type
User-Defined Literal - Number	entity.name.operator.custom-literal.number
User-Defined Literal - Raw	entity.name.operator.custom-literal
User-Defined Literal - String	entity.name.operator.custom-literal.string
Value Type (C++/CLI)	entity.name.type.class.value

Customizing Colors in Settings

Colors can also be overridden globally, in settings:

    "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
        "textMateRules": [
            {
                "scope": "entity.name.type",
                "settings": {
                    "foreground": "#FF0000",
                    "fontStyle": "italic bold underline"
                }
            }
        ]
    }

Or, overridden on a per-theme basis:

    "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
        "[Visual Studio Dark]": {
            "textMateRules": [
                {
                    "scope": "entity.name.type",
                    "settings": {
                        "foreground": "#FF0000",
                        "fontStyle": "italic bold underline"
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    }