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What are your favorite VS Code extensions and why?

Brian Clark 💡 on September 17, 2019

Dzhavat Ushev • Sep 17 '19 • Edited

GitHub Pull Request - It helps me see how the changes fit with the rest of the code. And, of course, reviewing and managing PRs.
GitLens - There are so many good stuff about this extension! I especially like all the "meta" info added to each file like who made the last change, what it was, having a direct link to a commit, etc.
Project Manager - Helps me manage projects. I think VS Code has something similar build-in by now (or am I mistaken?) but never gave it a try. This extension is quite handy.
Prettier - Formats the code for me. There are cases where I don't like a particular formatting but it's fine 99% of the time.
TSLint - Helps me have a somewhat consistent and stupid-errors-free codebase.
Night Owl - The dark theme is the best.
Angular Snippets - Like it for all the snippets it provides, so I can quickly move to actually doing something productive.
CSS Flexbox Cheatsheet - Like it because it lets me open a flexbox cheatsheet on the side so I can look up properties and their values. (Disclosure: I built this extension).

John Papa • Sep 17 '19

Thanks for the Angular Snippets love!

Eric Amodio • Sep 19 '19

Thanks for the GitLens mention!

Dzhavat Ushev • Sep 19 '19

Thank you for creating it. It's amazing!

Alessandro Fragnani • Sep 20 '19

Thanks for the Project Manager mention!

Dzhavat Ushev • Sep 21 '19

You're welcome. Thank you for making it. It's awesome! And welcome to dev.to :)

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19

Thanks for sharing this comprehensive list Dzhavat 👍 I had not heard of the Project Manager or CSS Flexbox Cheatsheet extensions before and am checking them out now.

Brad • Sep 17 '19

I have a few that I must have

prettier - it current has some funky issues formatting html, but besides that. ctrl+s = well formatted code.
gitlens - all your git needs in your UI. I only use it for "visual" tasks, good-ol terminal for all the other stuff.
Settings sync I have a lot of settings, extensions and use multiple machines (at least 3 most days) keeping my config the same when I change it on all machines is great
Synthwave '84 - I love the "80's neon grid" aesthetic. So much so I installed this as my first editor theme, its freaken awesome! 😎 (well at least to me it is haha)

Zack • May 21 '20

Synthwave x Fluoromachine is what I've been using. It takes the original idea and turns it up to 11.

I didn't know about Settings Sync until now. This is perfect for switching between my mac and pc. Cheers!

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19

All great! In particular Settings sync has been a huge help with jumping between machines. Thanks for sharing Brad 👍

Thomas Rayner • Sep 17 '19

Obviously Random Name Generator!

Just kidding, I wrote that one when I just wanted an excuse to get to know the VS Code API.

Here's a few I like:
Azure Pipelines
Azure Repos
Bracket Pair Colorizer 2
C#
Live Share
Peacock
PowerShell

I think they're all pretty straightforward for why I like them and how they're used. The only non-obvious thing, is that with the Azure Pipelines extension, you can change the language of a YAML build definition from YAML to Azure Pipelines and get some better intellisense.

John Papa • Sep 17 '19

Thanks for the Peacock love!

Thomas Rayner • Sep 18 '19

It's stopped me from "doing a dumb" more than a couple times!

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19

We have similar tastes I see 🙂. Definitely a good list of extensions Thomas and thanks for sharing them 👍

Shawn P Pence • Sep 17 '19

GitLens - it allows me to quickly see history both for files and for individual lines within a file and quickly compare to see what changed without having to remember (or look up) git diff commands.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19

Yessss. GitLens is fantastic. Thanks for sharing Shawn 👍

Michael "lampe" Lazarski • Sep 17 '19 • Edited

The "Remote Development" Extension (pack). This is just amazing! I use it daily and I would cry like a little child when someone would take it away from me! This makes daily development so much easier! Just set up your remote env and from that point just open VS Code and everything is setup. Amazing!

I also published a post about my VS Code setup. There I talk about the other extensions I use.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19

Lol well I don't think anyone is gonna take it away from you and I'm glad to hear it's been helpful. Thanks for sharing your input and for the post about your setup. It's always fun to see how other devs have everything configured 👍

Marcelo Alves 🐙 • Sep 18 '19 • Edited

Some of my current favorites:

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2 - Sometimes brackets like to get lost!
Peacock - Give those windows some color to tell projects apart
PolaCode - I don't use this one often but its always super useful when I need it
Toggle Quotes - Quickly toggle between quotes
Turbo Console Log - Throws in a console.log() with the code path in case you're like me and like to litter them all over the place

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

Whoa Toggle Quotes is pretty neat! Thanks for sharing Marcelo 👍

John Papa • Oct 13 '19

Glad you like Peacock, thanks :)

Michael Jolley • Sep 18 '19

GitHub Pull Requests
Great for PR checkouts/reviews.

Remote Development Extension Pack
The only way I want to develop now. So much so that I wrote a talk about it.

Gist
Awesome extension for managing/editing your Gists.

Docker
Great for linting Dockerfiles & docker-compose files. Also gives nice insight to containers, images, networks and volumes on your machine.

Angular Snippets (Version 8)
Snippets that speed up my Angular work. Thank you @john_papa for the countless hours you've saved me with this one.

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2
Nice coloring of brackets to identify where you're at and what's closed.

John Papa • Oct 13 '19

Glad you like the Angular Snippets, thanks :)

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

Nice Mike. Would've been surprised considering recent events if you hadn't included the Remote Development one. Good stuff and thanks for sharing 👍

Braden Watkins • Sep 18 '19 • Edited

My favorite language-agnostic extensions

dark-plus-syntax- Current theme
GitLens - Enough said
Output Colorizer Syntax highlighting for log files
Path Autocomplete - Best path complete extension I've found so far
Prettier - To format all the things
Settings Sync - Makes setting up VSCode on a new workspace a breeze.
Snippet Creator - Best snippet creator I've found
Sort Lines - Comes in surprisingly handy
Spell Checker - No more spelling mistakes
VSCode Simpler Icons - Favorite icon set so far

Shameless plug: These are all grouped together into my language agnostic extension pack: Essentials

Braden Watkins • Sep 18 '19

Others that I'm test driving, but I'm not sold on yet include:

Better Comments - Syntax highlighting for different kinds of comments
Gist - Create, open and edit gists
jumpy - Fast cursor movement based on a similar package in Atom
Partial Diff - Diff two bits of text right in VSCode
Peacock - Workspace organization
REST Client - HTTP REST Client right in VSCode

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

This is a fantastic list. A bunch I had not heard of so thanks for sharing Braden 👍

John Papa • Oct 13 '19

Glad you like Peacock, thanks :)

Quintus Cardozo • Sep 18 '19

Git Graph - Does exactly what it says
Git Lens - Git on steroids
Atlassin Bitbucket - issue tracking, code review, pull requests all inside the editor
Docker - Managing images and containers
VscodeVim - Good way to learn vim
Horizon Theme - My current theme

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

That Git Graph shows some nice visualizations of my project's history and the Horizon theme looks nice too. Thanks for sharing Quintus 👍

Jarett Lee • Sep 17 '19

Remote Development is a tool I use every day. It makes it so easy to work on server code.

VsCodeVim is great for people like me who love vim, but also want to use a more modern experience. I especially love how vim macros work in VS Code.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19

I really need to take the time to learn Vim keyboard shortcuts. I'm very jealous and it's cool to hear the extension helps keep you moving with that skill. Thanks for sharing Jarett 👍

Andy Li • Sep 18 '19

Haxe Support for Visual Studio Code has been in super high quality. It's maintained by some of the Haxe compiler developers and I've been seeing them adding features directly to the compiler for the VS code extension!

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

Whoa that sent me down a fun rabbit hole. Had no idea what Haxe was before and it seems really cool. What kind of apps have you built with it?

Also thanks for sharing Andy 👍

Andy Li • Sep 18 '19

Haxe mostly shines in the game dev area at the moment. You can find many great games in the haxe.org game use-case page.

I myself use Haxe for everything. My current startup Giffon 🎁 is written in Haxe (targeting JS/node). In the past when I was doing my PhD, I use the Haxe Python target for data analysis, and the Java target for writing an Android app.

It's not that using Haxe will let anyone know how to write website, do data analysis, or write native mobile apps instantly, but it's more of a tool to let me jump through all these areas without googling "how to find an element in an array in language X" all the time, and just focus on building the thing.

Maxime Bouveron • Sep 18 '19 • Edited

Apart from the usual well-known ones (GitLens etc.)

ECMAScript Quotes Transformer - Lets you toggle between the three types of quotes. Perfect when binded to Ctrl/Cmd + '
Find-Jump - Press a key combination, start writing the characters you want to jump to, press the keys shown next to your jump target and tadam, you can easily go anywhere in your code without using your mouse, arrow keys or read 3 books about VIM keybindings.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

These are both quite interesting. Didn't realize there was so much toggling between quote types as @Marcelo Alves also shared something similar called Toggle Quotes. Maybe I need to dig into this more haha. Thanks for sharing Maxime 👍

Jeff Hollan • Sep 17 '19

Azure Functions!!! My less well known but super useful one is REST Client that lets you do Postman-like requests without leaving the editor.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 17 '19 • Edited

Ooo yea that extension is super handy testing out API's. I love when I can stay in one context while developing. And yes of course the Azure Functions extension is great especially for that local debugging capability. Thanks for sharing Jeff 👍

Kelson448 • Sep 18 '19

"Prettier" is a must have for me, not having to deal with formatting code manually probably saves me several hours a week.

"Code spell checker" is another key extension, especially when writing user visible text.

"Indent Rainbow" and "Rainbow Brackets" are extremely useful for parsing complexly nested sections.

"Comment anchors" is a huge step up for those TODO comments we all leave. They are color coded, can be navigated directly to via an extension page, and show up on the scroll bar. I frequently use this to mark my path as I'm hunting for an elusive bug or building a complex feature.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

For sure Prettier has saved me a ton of time but there have also been times I've felt like I'm in battle with it haha.

I'm gonna check out the comment anchors as that sounds like a nice addition. Thanks for sharing 👍

Aaron Powell • Sep 18 '19

Can I shamelessly love my own extension, Profile Switcher, which is used to create profiles of settings & extensions to switch between.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

Of course you can and what a great extension it is! Thanks for sharing Aaron 👍

Basile • Sep 18 '19

Prettier : Litterally must have for me since I discover it !
Rest Client : Being bored of Postman, you never need to get out of VSCode now :P
Material Icons Theme : Support nearly all extensions, also for folders, pretty neat
Simple React Snippets : Those ones are really what I needed for React development, coupled with React Hooks Snippets, it's awesome !

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

Yes all great extensions and themes. Thanks for sharing Basile 👍

Jakub Míšek • Sep 19 '19

PHP Tools for VS Code - first I'm developing it, second it is really fun to work on a complete editor integration and peek into developers needs and problems.

John Papa • Sep 17 '19

yes! i just did this in a project. i need to write about it

Chris Stead • Sep 18 '19

JS Refactor - automated refactorings for JS, TS, React, Vue, etc. I practically can't work without it anymore. 👍

Bracket Pair Colorizer - colors matching brackets and highlights the current captured area between the brackets. It really simplifies staying within the current scope.

Brian Clark 💡 • Sep 18 '19

Love me some bracket pair colorizer and really need to look into that JS Refactor one. Thanks for sharing Chris 👍

Venkatesh KL • Sep 23 '19

Settings Sync
Nothing even comes close how useful this is for me.

These just follow settings sync 😉
Better Comments
Prettier
Eslint
Git history

Dzhavat Ushev • Sep 17 '19

Oh, thanks for letting me know! Definitely need to look into this but with all TSLint/ESLint extensions, it can get quite confusing as to what is what.