This setting disables the explorer jumping: "explorer.autoReveal": false And here are some settings you can play with to get that window/instance behaviour

This setting disables the explorer jumping: "explorer.autoReveal": false And here are some settings you can play with to get that window/instance behaviour under control (default values shown here): "window.openFilesInNewWindow": "off", "window.openFoldersInNewWindow": "default", "window.openWithoutArgumentsInNewWindow": "off", "window.restoreWindows": "all", "security.workspace.trust.untrustedFiles": "prompt"