activityBar.activeBorder and activityBar.activeBackground is not recognized

[aniskhan001]

• VSCode Version: 1.40.0
• OS Version: MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open the settings.json file
2. Type in activityBar.activeBorder or activityBar.activeBackground and enter some values

Screenshot:

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

[hannawalter]

For those settings to be recognized they have to be nested in
workbench.colorCustomizations

Like so:

 "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        "activityBar.activeBorder": "#ff00a8",
        "activityBar.activeBackground": "#ff00a822"
},

[vscodebot]

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Happy Coding!

[zachvalenta]

I asked (and answered) this on Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47390242/how-to-modify-vscode-activity-bar

[temurih]

I believe this has to be better documented than this,

You can control the active indicator via the new color token, activityBar.activeBorder. We also introduced an optional background color for the active element, activityBar.activeBackground, and when configured can look like so:

I was making the same mistake as OP.