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14 VSCode Extensions That Will Improve Your Productivity

Thomas De Moor on September 19, 2019

2020 edit: this post now has an updated version with six more extensions. Go check it out! Who's more productive: John, who writes 100 lines of te...
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Víctor Adrián

I think you are missing a couple of really good ones, as far as general purpose extensions are concerned:

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Alexandre Amado de Castro

+1 to gitlens, awesome plug-in.

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Sara Neale

I just tried Peacock and I'm into it! I like the surprise me setting. Thanks!

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Thomas De Moor

Good ones! I've included them in my updated version here: x-team.com/blog/best-vscode-extens...

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Jakub Sarnowski

Auto Rename Tags has a massive amount of bugs which makes this extension unusable. At least that was my experience :)

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Thomas De Moor

I've added a little edit underneath Auto Rename Tags about its bugs. Thank you for mentioning it!

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Matthias 🤖 • Edited

I prefer GitGraph over GitHistory. I just like the design better, both extensions are fantastic and doing what they are supposed to do.

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ari.length

Thank you very much settings sync, life server and bookmarks are pure gold.
I prefer nearest icons extension to icon fonts because we can see directly the font awesome icons we are looking for. Regex Previewer seems really convenient but I can't make it work. Anyway Thank for this great post !

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Nicolas Carlo

Hey, thank you Thomas for sharing these!

"Bracket Pair Colorizer" & "Bookmarks" are probably the two from the list that I can't work without anymore 😁

You made me discover "Regex Previewer", it looks very useful. It could definitely save me time from going to regex101.com to check RegExp magic.

I'd also like to suggest people to try an automated refactoring extension. These can save you precious time and make you more productive working with existing code.

If your language is JS / TS, you can have a look to:

Again, thank you for sharing and have a nice day!

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Thomas De Moor

Happy you found a new useful extension! And both automated refactoring extensions look useful. Thanks for sharing.

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ppezaris

Great list! I'll second the comment that GitLens is an awesome plugin to consider, and if you are interested in increasing team productivity (in addition to personal productivity) then one to consider is CodeStream (disclaimer, I'm the author).

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martinakuzniecowa

thanks for Bracket Pair Colorizer

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tarifa-man

Thomas - wow this is outstanding. - , great and overwhelming - i appreciate your text it is very very good .
i am happy to read your text - i like it very much. Can you give us more hints to run VSCode or VSCodium on mx-linux:

cf : I use VSCode daily and it is widely used, i am shocked it is not in stable repo. Please add VSCode to the package list. please - see more here: forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=...
you are invited to add your ideas to the thread.

dear Thomas- well we look forward to hear form you -regards tarifa

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Álvaro A. Quirós López

Good one's. Let me add "Turbo Console Log" marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...

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Thomas De Moor

Good one. I've added that one in the updated version of this article: x-team.com/blog/best-vscode-extens...

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Eric Ahnell

Most of these don't help non-web programmers, but there are some great general-purpose extensions here too!

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Thomas De Moor

Yes, that's a good point. Any general-purpose ones you could recommend?

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Eric Ahnell

Visual Studio Code is tertiary among IDEs I use - Eclipse and Visual Studio (Enterprise) get used WAY more - so I haven't invested enough in extensions to recommend any!

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Bogdan Alexandru Militaru

Nice article Thomas! I created a similar article, maybe you can take a look on it here boobo94.xyz/tips/vscode-setup-for-...

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Constantin Boulanger

Hello!
Thank you for sharing!

I've created myself an article where I share my favourite extensions for VSCode !

Here : My favourite extensions for Visual Studio Code

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Ankit kumar shukla

awasmmm

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Kamil Dzieniszewski

Auto Rename Tag is buggy as hell!

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Thomas De Moor

I've added a little edit underneath Auto Rename Tags about its bugs. Thank you for mentioning it!

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Kamil Dzieniszewski

this should be integrated with VSCode :(

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Tammy Lee

Wow! These are all great suggestions!
Thanks so much, Thomas!

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Adedoyin Damilare

Regex Previewer seems like an awesome tool. Can't wait to start using it.

Thanks a lot for this Thomas!

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shushpan profile image

You should try it tabnine.com

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Solafa khaled

Thank you for sharing this

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Filisha

What about increased productivity due to collaboration to the left of the dev process? Would you consider that a productivity enhancer? Like say using Live Share (aka.ms/vsls)

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Thomas De Moor

That's a good question. I'd say that you're likely going to be a little bit slower when working together with other people, but you're likely to end up with a better end product.

It's basically what this proverb says: "When you want to go fast, go alone. When you want to go far, go together."