Visual Studio Code
Free and extensible code editor with built-in Git support, smart IntelliSense, integrated debugger, 30,000+ extensions, works offline, supports markdown and syntax highlighting for numerous languages.
Cost / License
- Free
- Proprietary (MIT)
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Chrome OS
- Snapcraft
Features
Properties
- Customizable
- Support for Themes
Features
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- Autocompletion
- Built-in terminal emulation
- Syntax Highlighting
- Code Completion
- Multiple languages
GitHub Integration
Git Support- Supports Python
- Dark Mode
- C++
- Multiple Cursors
- Auto Update
- Graphical User Interface
- Support for MarkDown
- WYSIWYG HTML Editor
- Plug-ins
- Support for Javascript
Support for Node.js- Theme Customization
- PHP IDE
- Minimap
- Remote Debugging
- Git integration
- C# Scripting
- Works Offline
- Ad-free
- Live Preview
- WYSIWYG Support
- No registration required
- Code Formatting
- C support
- Ruby support
- Lint support
- Code navigation
- Embedded debugger
- Specific for 64-Bit
- Support for 64 bit
- Custom Plugins
- Electron based
- Run Android Apps on Desktop
- Mercurial support
- Objective-c
Visual Studio Code News & Activities
Recent News
- Fla published news article about Visual Studio Code
VS Code 1.118 adds remote Copilot CLI control and broader semantic code searchVisual Studio Code 1.118 introduces remote control for Copilot CLI sessions, enabling users to trac...
- Fla published news article about Shopify
Shopify AI Toolkit launches for agent integration and store managementShopify has released the Shopify AI Toolkit, enabling developers to integrate AI agents such as Cla...
- Fla published news article about Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code 1.115 adds Agents app and major agent tools upgradesVisual Studio Code 1.115 introduces the Agents companion app for agent-native development, enabling...
Recent activities
POX added Visual Studio Code as alternative to Scribe- hakki liked Visual Studio Code
- NuncioBitis reviewed Visual Studio Code
This used to be a good IDE until they forced their AI extension to be installed by default and cannot be uninstalled. Disabling it doesn't even turn it off.
POX added Visual Studio Code as alternative to Notepad++ for Mac- shaishavap reviewed Visual Studio Code
VS Code has become the default editor for web development for good reason — the extension ecosystem is enormous and covers almost every language, framework, and workflow you can think of. Startup time is fast, the integrated terminal is genuinely useful, and Git integration is solid enough that I rarely need to open a separate Git client. IntelliSense for TypeScript and JavaScript is particularly strong. My main issue is memory usage — with a large project and a dozen extensions active it eats...
- ingyukang rated Visual Studio Code
- ingyukang liked Visual Studio Code
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What is Visual Studio Code?
Visual Studio Code is a free and extensible code editor for building web, desktop, and mobile applications, using any programming language and framework.
Visual Studio Code has built-in support for Git source control management and powerful integrations with GitHub, an integrated debugger, and smart code completion with IntelliSense and with AI-driven IntelliCode. With over 30,000 extensions and themes in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace, you can customize the features and the look of Visual Studio Code to fit your needs, preferences, and style.
You can use Visual Studio Code to build any kind of app, for web, desktop, and mobile. Visual Studio Code supports JavaScript and TypeScript natively and offers extensions for coding in languages such as Python, Java, C/C++, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, and many more.
Known as VS-Code amongst the community, it is one of the most popular code editors and has a browser version which can be immediately accessed by going to vscode.dev.
Any agent, any model Use the agent harness that fits your workflow. Run agents locally or in the cloud, with Copilot or third-party providers like Claude and OpenAI.
Choose from dozens of models across providers, from fast completion models to advanced reasoning models. Or bring your own key to use any model from any provider.
All your sessions, one view Stay productive while multiple agents work on tasks in parallel. Track all your agent sessions from a single view, regardless of where they run.
Quickly filter and monitor sessions, or dive into an individual agent interaction, without switching to a different tool or terminal.
Your rules, your agents Ensure agents follow your practices and team workflows. Define custom instructions, add agent skills, or build custom agents tailored to your project.
Connect to external tools and services with MCP servers, or install agent plugins or extensions to expand the agent's capabilities.
Visual Studio Code information
Developed by
Microsoft Licensing
Proprietary (MIT) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.2Alternatives
214 alternatives listedNews
47 news article related to Visual Studio CodeSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Development, Office & Productivity, OS & UtilitiesGitHub repository
- 167,636 Stars
- 30,663 Forks
- 9178 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Faster then atom. Fresher then notepad++. Freer then sublime text.
And more extensible than all three.
Fast, intuitive, extensible
It is actually NOT open source. Its base is open source, you have to compile it yourself since the binary you can download on the official page was actually MODIFIED and under a proprietary license! It's like the relationship between Chrome and Chromium, except that Google NEVER even tried to call the Chrome "open source", but Microsoft indeed does.
The name for the open source application is actually called "Code - OSS Dev".
Actually, VSCode developers says that "The cool thing about all of this is that you have the choice to use the Visual Studio Code branded product under our license or you can build a version of the tool straight from the vscode repository, under the MIT license. Here's how it works. When you build from the vscode repository, you can configure the resulting tool by customizing the product.json file. This file controls things like the Gallery endpoints, “Send-a-Smile” endpoints, telemetry endpoints, logos, names, and more. When we build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license." They seems to be light and reversible customizations.
[Edited by dany111, December 18] https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60
Things seem to be more complex. See: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/31168#issuecomment-317319063 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#proprietary-debugging-tools https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/49159
[Edited by dany111, June 14]
One of the tenets of the FOSS philosophy is that you can create derivative works from a FOSS product for whatever purpose, including commercial. Now Microsoft has done exactly that: It has created branded binaries from its own FOSS code. And there is a good reason behind that; they need to protect their customers against backspaceware. (The same goes for the popular Google Chrome.)
This used to be a good IDE until they forced their AI extension to be installed by default and cannot be uninstalled. Disabling it doesn't even turn it off.
VS Code has become the default editor for web development for good reason — the extension ecosystem is enormous and covers almost every language, framework, and workflow you can think of. Startup time is fast, the integrated terminal is genuinely useful, and Git integration is solid enough that I rarely need to open a separate Git client. IntelliSense for TypeScript and JavaScript is particularly strong. My main issue is memory usage — with a large project and a dozen extensions active it eats RAM noticeably. Still the best free editor available for full-stack development, and the remote development extensions make it useful for server work too.
VS Code is my go-to editor for everything from React to Python. The IntelliSense is top-notch, and the customization options are endless. It's fast, free, and has a massive community. Sometimes the search across files can be a bit slow in very large monorepos, but that's a minor trade-off for such a versatile tool.
It's one of the finest software out there, a necessity for every developer.
Its great, but as its not really opensource and has trackers i prefer VScodium.