Recently I ran into some huge TypeScript types in a project and wanted to inspect their actual structure, but VSCode only shows a small part by default and replaces the rest with an ellipsis ...:

That annoyed me to no end. VSCode can’t expand the type because that’s just what the language server returns.

After some Googling, I found a solution.

However, that March 2023 article is outdated, and the workaround is quite hacky (it directly modifies the workspace’s TS server script). It did point to the corresponding issue, though.

It’s been almost 8 years and this issue is still open.

Unfortunately, the issue didn’t solve my problem. I took another look at the file behind that hardcoded workaround (the file change was linked in the issue comments), and from defaultHoverMaximumTruncationLength I found another variable, maximumLength, which takes precedence over the former. Ctrl+click to view its definition led me to the getQuickInfoAtPosition function, and from there to the key part:

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const quickInfo = project.getLanguageService().getQuickInfoAtPosition(
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  file,
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  this.getPosition(args, scriptInfo),
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  userPreferences.maximumHoverLength,
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  args.verbosityLevel,
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);

This userPreferences.maximumHoverLength clearly looked like a setting that should exist in VSCode, so I went back to GitHub and found #248181, a PR merged just this May. Finally!

From the PR diff I got js/ts.hover.maximumLength. Increasing it solves the problem perfectly. Nice.

Laughing at myself

Rereading this on 2026-06-29: I went in such a long circle I laughed at myself.