The following question seems like pretty basic stuff but after hours of research and trying various "fixes" I am still not successful...

In Visual Studio Code, each time I close the current folder, I am greeted with only the “Open a folder” screen. The primary and secondary side bars are gone and I only have one edit window. I have to go to “view/appearance” and" view/editor layout" to restore my layout. Since I start new projects with platformio, I have to first bring up the primary side bar to bring up platformio. I have “windows/preserve” set but that does not help.

Can anyone point out how I can save this user layout so each time I “start clean” by closing a folder, I have my primary and secondary side bar and my two editor windows and all in the proportions that I set them? I know this should be basic stuff, but as I said, I have spent hours searching on this and none of what I found seems to work.

Thanks