I forked Text Marker (VS Code) to remove telemetry, add async matching and persistent auto-save — Text Marker Plus

Description and use

The developer forked Text Marker for VS Code, removing telemetry, adding async matching and auto‑save for highlight rules, and improving the color palette.

Problem

The original Text Marker extension had no telemetry removal, lacked auto‑save for highlight rules, and performed blocking synchronous matching, causing slow performance on large files and visible split panes.

Outcome

Text Marker Plus provides the same core highlighting workflow as the original but with removed telemetry, faster async matching, auto‑save, configurable persistence, and an improved color palette.

Workflow

• Fork the original Text Marker repository
• Remove telemetry code and related settings
• Implement async, chunked matching that processes visible split panes first
• Add auto‑save toggle and configurable save target for highlight rules
• Replace default palette with One Half Dark and modify color cycling logic
• Test the extension in personal workflow and publish to Marketplace

Evidence

The original extension includes telemetry and enables it by default. You can turn it off, but for something whose whole job is highlighting text in files I'm working on, I didn't see much reason for telemetry to exist at all.

Source

Instead of blocking on the whole document in one pass, matching runs in smaller async chunks, with the visible part of the editor prioritized so highlights appear quickly while the rest finishes in the background.

Source

Enable auto-save on toggle instead of saving manually every time, and choose where rules get saved — workspace, global, or prompted each time.

Source

I swapped the default palette for one based on One Half Dark — it's just a better-looking set of colors than what shipped originally.

Source