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FebruaryUniversal VS File Viewer for Windows, Mac & Linux
A "VS file" commonly represents a `.vs` extension file, but since some people also label Visual Studio’s `. If you are you looking for more info in regards to VS file support review our own site. vs` folder this way, its meaning relies on how it’s being referenced; if it really is a `.vs` file, it’s usually a vertex shader script for rendering pipelines, stored as plain text you can open in typical editors, and its code may mimic HLSL with constructs like `float4` plus semantics such as `POSITION`, or GLSL with `vec3` feeding into `gl_Position`.
Because the `.vs` extension isn’t restricted to one meaning, the file might be custom text or binary, and if it looks unreadable the most reliable identification method is checking its source program; but a folder named `.vs` next to a `.sln` file is simply Visual Studio’s cache directory containing IntelliSense data, not real project code, and while it’s excluded from Git, deleting it is usually safe since Visual Studio rebuilds it—at the cost of losing local UI state like window layouts.
".vs" can mean something else because file extensions don’t have regulated meanings, with Windows treating them mainly as hints for which application should open them, leaving developers free to reuse the same extension in completely different ways, so not every `.vs` file should be assumed to be a vertex shader even if that’s widespread in graphics work; another app could assign `.vs` to its own configuration file, and Windows would still call it a "VS file" unless a program on your machine has associated with it.
A `.vs` file can also be "something else" because the extension’s implication changes by context; in rendering projects `.vs` is often understood as a vertex shader due to its association with other shader files and build steps, yet other workflows reuse `.vs` for readable config or script files containing XML text unrelated to HLSL/GLSL, and some `.vs` files are binary, appearing garbled since they’re compiled assets or caches, so you learn the truth from where the file came from and what program handles it correctly.
If you want a quick confirmation of what your `.vs` file actually signifies, treat the extension as just a hint and validate through evidence: check where the file sits and what’s around it, review its "Opens with" details, and open it in a text editor to see if it looks like shader code, some other text structure, or binary—those steps nearly always give you the answer quickly.
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