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Automatically Open the Current Directory in VS Code From Terminal

Shannon Crabill on December 28, 2020

Last year, I was blown away by some Terminal commands that I learned. My favorite one is open . to open a Finder window for whichever directory you...

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Ben Sinclair • Jan 6 '21 • Edited

I'm pretty sure VS Code installs itself into the path anyway, doesn't it? I've never had to do anything and it works using code even on Windows.

A hot tip though using open is that you can pass anything to it and it'll behave like you clicked that thing in the GUI, even URLs. So on a Mac, you could do open https://dev.to and it'd open in your default browser. Since VS Code registers itself as the handler for vscode schemes, you can also do this:

open 'vscode://file//Users/myusername/projects/myfile.txt:123:45'

And it'll open VS Code with the file /Users/myusername/projects/myfile.txt and your cursor already on line 123 and column 45. This is how those error messages that say things like "syntax error at line 20" get to magically work in some cases.

If you use VSCodium, change the appropriate bit to vscodium://, if you use Gnome or any derivatives, change open to gnome-open. Other Linux systems have other syntaxes, but generally one of those two will get you by.

Shannon Crabill • Jan 7 '21

A hot tip though using open is that you can pass anything to it and it'll behave like you clicked that thing in the GUI, even URLs. So on a Mac, you could do open dev.to and it'd open in your default browser. Since VS Code registers itself as the handler for vscode schemes, you can also do this:

open 'vscode://file//Users/myusername/projects/myfile.txt:123:45'

And it'll open VS Code with the file /Users/myusername/projects/myfile.txt and your cursor already on line 123 and column 45. This is how those error messages that say things like "syntax error at line 20" get to magically work in some cases.

Whooooooooa I did not know you could get this specific with open .. This should be it's own blog post.

Nick Taylor • Jan 6 '21 • Edited

It doesn't from what I've understood. You have to do it explicitly. I typically do it via the command palette like Shannon did.

Ben Sinclair • Jan 6 '21

Have you tried it without? What OS are you using?

Mel DeJesus • Apr 16 '23

Yep; I'm on Ventura OS ~ it might depend on how VS code was installed, but I've had to follow Shannon's approach.

Joshua Blauvelt • Feb 23 '22 • Edited

This is great, thanks! I can open any folder from the integrated terminal but it will start a new instance of VS Code; is there a way to open the folder within the same VS Code instance?

Rob • Mar 6 '22

Try code -r [name of file/folder]

Sudhakar • Mar 22 '22 • Edited

Try code -a . (It opens the folder within the same VS Code instance)
Try code -r . (It refreshes the same VS Code instance and opens the folder, terminal also gets refreshed)

Jay Rodriguez • Sep 13

What about files? can you open them as well from the same instance if your in the directory?

James Q Quick • Jan 6 '21

Yassss!! Use this all the time. Share in Discord :)

Saad Bakhiyi • Jan 8 '22

Thank you, you help a lot

Phu Ngo • Jun 19 '21

Anyway to do it the other way around? When I open a folder from vscode, to then automatically open the terminal?

Mike McQueen • Jan 6 '21

This plus the gpm plugin, which let's me open any git project from within vscode Without trying my hands off the keyboard make me feel like "Hackerman".

Ilay Rosenstein • Jul 11 '22

thank you! been looking for it myself for a while.