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Cover image for My 12 Favorite VSCode Extensions
Katherine Peterson
Katherine Peterson

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at blog.katherinempeterson.com

My 12 Favorite VSCode Extensions

One of the reasons VSCode is such an awesome code editor is the huge library of extensions created by the community that increase developer productivity. Below are some of my favorite VSCode extensions.


1. Rainbow Brackets

Rainbow Brackets Example
This simple extension makes your brackets colorful so you can easily find matching pairs.

2. Auto Rename Tag

Auto Rename Tag Demo
There isn't really ever a time where you would want to change an html tag without changing the corresponding opening/closing tag. Automatically change both at the same time with this extension.

3. Relative Path

Relative Path Demo
This extension has saved me so much time writing import statements. Easily get the relative path to any file in your workspace with a simple keyboard shortcut.

4. Prettier

Alt Text
Keep your code style consistent with this formatter. Configure your settings exactly how you like, then format your code with a keyboard shortcut or on save.

5. htmltagwrap

htmltagwrap Demo
Highlight a block of code and use a shortcut to wrap it in any html tag.

6. Markdown Preview Enhanced

Markdown Preview Enhanced Demo
If you ever write markdown files, having a live preview is incredibly helpful.

7. Polacode

Polacode Demo
This extension allows you to take beautiful screenshots of your code.

8. Random Everything

Alt Text
There are so many better uses of our time than coming up with fake placeholder data. This extension allows you to quickly add random pieces of data to your code, such as names, emails, colors, etc.

9. CSS Peek

CSS Peek Demo
"Peek" at the styles for any CSS class, id, or HTML tag. Open the styles inline or quickly jump to the file where they are defined.

10. Turbo Console Log

Turbo Console Log Demo
Easily log variable names and their values to the console with a keyboard shortcut. Can be configured to include things like file name and line number in the log for easier debugging.

11. Simple React Snippets

Simple React Snippets Demo
Snippets for all of the React boilerplate you write over and over again.

12. Snippet Creator

Snippet Creator Demo
There are many snippet extensions like the React one above, but sometimes you might want to make your own custom snippets. This extension allows you to do that easily.

Top comments (40)

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Congrats on your first post!

You did it!

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afthabanees profile image
Afthab Anees

lmao

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weirdmayo profile image
Daniel Mayovsky

Vim plugin is a necessity for me

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soconn profile image
soconn

I'm a vim guy through and through, but that plugin only lasted a few minutes with me

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afthabanees profile image
Afthab Anees

Why Tho ??

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soconn profile image
soconn

The workflow just didn't feel right with working in an IDE.

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afthabanees profile image
Afthab Anees

hmm

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nald profile image
Nald

There have been lots of articles about vs code extensions, but from this article I just know about snippet-creator and htmltagwrap. Great extensions, extensions that make my life easier : D, thanks

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tabnine profile image
Tabnine

Great article. You're missing something for productivity, though :) have you heard of Tabnine AI code completions? It uses GPT-2 based models to predict the exact code the developer has intended to type and saves thousands of keystrokes. Works miraculously with VS Code!

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Matthieu Vion

Super hyped by the ´console.log´ extension ! I need to test that :)

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markilabot profile image
Mark Escolano • Edited

Yeah me too. It has a windows keys shortcut instruction. For MAC users should work with ctrl+option+L.

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neatcoder profile image
Neat Coder

Nice and Useful list of Extensions!
Thanks..

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michelledev3 profile image
michelledev

Thanks Katherine -- U ROCK!

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anubra266 profile image
Abraham

This is beautiful, but you should checkout webpack aliases, you won't need No 3

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katherinecodes profile image
Katherine Peterson

Very cool, I didn’t know about that.

I don’t use webpack in all my projects though so it might still be useful to have both?

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anubra266 profile image
Abraham

Yeah, both is good.

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raychginge profile image
Rachel Bourne

Thanks, this list is really helpful

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pfacklam profile image
Paul Facklam

Good article and very useful extensions. Thanks for sharing!