Add Opacity & Variable Height to Minimap

I’m looking for a way to change my VSCode Editor Minimap to behave more like the Atom Minimap.

Specifically, to have container opacity and variable height as the file grows in length. The opacity is what is most important to me, but the variable container length would help a lot as well.

Currently, my Atom minimap allows opacity and only grows in length as needed.

While my VSCode minimap covers my code and maintains full pane height no matter how many lines are in the file.

I tried asking a question about this on stackoverflow and looking through these issues. So far the closest I’ve found to this question is issue #21255, which points to issue #21229 and then to issue #21359, which lead to the implementation of a box shadow to make the minimap separation more prominent.

Unfortunately, the box shadow doesn’t allow me to recover that text editor width while keeping my minimap enabled. This makes the difference between being able to see all my code using 2 panes and having my code cut off by the minimap.

I’m sure a lot of people transitioning from Atom to VSCode would appreciate being able to maintain this editor workspace, particularly when working with a lot of smaller files.

EDIT:

Adding what information I can in case you consider feature implementation:

Atom uses a gear icon that appears over the minimap on mouseover allows for ‘absolute-mode’ to be toggled on and off. This option toggles between a VSCode-like minimap and the one I showed above.

From what I understand of the VSCode design paradigm so far, I think a similar feature could be toggled as a User Setting such as "editor.minimap.absolutePosition": true,

[robinmacharg]

To save a click-through for anyone landing here, CMD-SHIFT-P -> Open Settings (JSON), and paste the following into the top level of the JSON:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "minimap.background": "#ffffff33"
}

This fixes the opacity (I use #000000 instead of white). I can live without the variable height.

[IMBurbank]

This feature is just as important today as it was 2.5 years ago.

It’s quite disappointing that this feature request has never been directly addressed, even in response to PRs, particularly since it’s an opt-in feature - minimap opacity would only change if set to less than 100%.

If there’s a reason this feature request won’t be accepted, I think a lot of people would appreciate knowing that so they can act accordingly. If this feature would be accepted in some form, I would be more than happy to submit a new PR for it.