Caleb Porzio did an amazing job with hisMake VS Code Awesome course. There were a lot of good tips on being more productive with VS Code, and one thing that particularly resonated with me was what he referred to as "silencing the noise". Essentially he covered how to reduce/remove all the visual clutter in VS Code that is there by default.

It's amazing how much cleaning up your editor / IDE can really impact your productivity. As an Android Developer I spend most of my time in Android Studio, and I noticed that there wasa lot of clutter. Buttons, windows, tabs, all things I don't use or information I don't need. So I decided to silence the noise, let's see what we can do.

The Starting Point

This is what Android Studio looks like by default. There areso many buttons, widgets, etc that are displayed that we don't need. Let's start by getting rid of the tool window buttons on the perimeter, updating the navigation toolbar actions, and removing a bunch of the bottom status bar widgets:

Remove Tool Window bars

Preferences -> Appearance & Behavior -> Appearance
Toggle offShow tool window bars

Remove actions from Navigation Toolbar

Preferences -> Appearance & Behavior -> Menus and Toolbars
Go to Navigation Bar Toolbar and delete a lot of that, this is what mine looks like now (still deciding if I need even these)

Remove widgets from Status bar

Left click on the bottom status bar and uncheck everything (I like to keep memory indicator, but feel free to remove that too).

Slightly Better

It's already looking much better! We now only have relevant information showing for the navigation toolbar and status bar. Next we can get rid of editor tabs and line numbers:

Remove Editor Tabs

Preferences -> Editor -> General -> Editor Tabs
Set Tab placement toNone

Remove Line Numbers

For Line numbers you can just left click on the line number side bar, and uncheckShow Line Numbers

Even Better

Lastly, let's update the aesthetic a little but. The stock font and Darcula theme areokay, but with a custom font and theMaterial Theme Plugin you can go a long way.

My preferences:
Recursive Duotone Mono
Material Theme - Github Dark

Final Product 🔥

To me the differences are night and day. Not only does itfeel better working with this configuration, I am more productive and focus on what I need to (the current file I am editing). Give it a shot and let me know what you think!