What are your favorite VS Code extensions and why?

Comments

[Dzhavat Ushev]

• 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]

Thanks for the Angular Snippets love!

[Eric Amodio]

Thanks for the GitLens mention!

[Dzhavat Ushev]

Thank you for creating it. It's amazing!

[Alessandro Fragnani]

Thanks for the Project Manager mention!

[Dzhavat Ushev]

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

[Brian Clark 💡]

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]

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]

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 💡]

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

[Shawn P Pence]

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 💡]

Yessss. GitLens is fantastic. Thanks for sharing Shawn 👍

[Thomas Rayner]

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]

Thanks for the Peacock love!

[Thomas Rayner]

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

[Brian Clark 💡]

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

[Michael "lampe" Lazarski]

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 💡]

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 🐙]

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 💡]

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

[John Papa]

Glad you like Peacock, thanks :)

[Quintus Cardozo]

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 💡]

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]

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 💡]

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 👍

[Braden Watkins]

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]

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

[John Papa]

Glad you like Peacock, thanks :)

[Brian Clark 💡]

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

[Michael Jolley]

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]

Glad you like the Angular Snippets, thanks :)

[Brian Clark 💡]

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

[Andy Li]

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 💡]

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]

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.

[Jeff Hollan]

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 💡]

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 👍

[Maxime Bouveron]

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 💡]

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 👍

[Aaron Powell]

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

[Brian Clark 💡]

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

[Kelson448]

"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 💡]

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 👍