VS Code

VS Code picks the language from the file extension. Dotfiles like .aliases have none, so they open as plain text.

Tell VS Code they’re shell scripts — add this to your user settings.json (Ctrl+Shift+P → “Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)”):

"files.associations": {
    ".aliases": "shellscript",
    ".aliases.local": "shellscript",
    ".functions": "shellscript",
    ".functions.local": "shellscript",
    ".zshenv.local": "shellscript",
    ".zshrc.local": "shellscript",
    ".zsh_secrets": "shellscript",
    ".zsh_aliases": "shellscript",
    ".zsh_functions": "shellscript",
    "*.tmux": "shellscript",
    "*.zsh": "shellscript"
}

.zshrc, .bashrc and .bash_profile are recognised already.

*.tmux files aren’t really shell scripts, but shell highlighting is close enough for tmux’s syntax.