25+ Visual Studio Code Extensions That Are Worth Installing

By Steven McLintock on February 2, 2020

Visual Studio Code is a code editor that has me falling head over heels for full stack development all over again. Visual Studio’s younger sibling, Visual Studio Code is built using the Electron framework, is open source and was recently announced as the default development environment at Facebook. It’s no surprise that it’s now the most popular development environment according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019. Controversially, it’s predicted to be on track to replace Visual Studio one day.

I was hesitant to install Visual Studio Code in the beginning. If it’s built on Electron, it’s essentially a web app, right? HTML, CSS and JavaScript under the hood. How could that be worth using over the heavyweight that is Visual Studio? Where as Visual Studio is known as the ‘heavyweight’ for Microsoft centric development, Visual Studio Code couldn’t be more different. Visual Studio Code adopts the slimline approach of .NET Core; only including the essentials and enabling the user to tailor their experience to specific requirements.

Extensions for Visual Studio Code

With the help of the developer community as well as the Visual Studio Marketplace, a user can install extensions to enhance the features available in Visual Studio Code. In addition to features, extensions can also be useful for enabling Visual Studio Code to support programming languages such as TypeScript, Python, Java, Ruby, Go, PHP, Objective-C and many more.

As much as I was hesitant to use Visual Studio Code, I was reluctant to install too many extensions. Why? I was happy to use one or two to get the job done and didn’t want to bloat my code editor with extensions I never used. What changed my mind? I was investigating a defect in TypeScript and after a few hours I was tearing my hair out! I asked a kind developer on my team to pull the feature-branch to their development environment and within 2 minutes they had identified the issue. I was amazed! One of their installed extensions (TSLint) had highlighted the issue and suggested a quick fix.

As I began exploring more extensions, I thought I’d share those I came across that are worth installing and may save you those crucial few hours in your development time.

JavaScript, TypeScript & Node

Icon	Title	Author	Description
	ESLint	Dirk Baeumer	Integrates ESLint JavaScript into VS Code
	JavaScript Booster	Stephan Burguchev	Boost your productivity with advanced JavaScript refactorings and commands
	JS Refactor	Chris Stead	Automated refactoring tools to smooth your development workflow
	node-readme	bengreenier	A vscode extension to view javascript module documentation in editor
	npm Intellisense	Christian Kohler	Visual Studio Code plugin that autocompletes npm modules in import statements
	Debugger for Chrome	Microsoft	Debug your JavaScript code in the Chrome browser, or any other target that supports the Chrome Debugger protocol
	Debugger for Firefox	Firefox DevTools	Debug your web application or browser extension in Firefox

Visual Enhancements

Icon	Title	Author	Description
	Bracket Pair Colorizer 2	CoenraadS	A customizable extension for colorizing matching brackets
	Indenticator	SirTori	Highlights your current indent depth
	Path Intellisense	Christian Kohler	Visual Studio Code plugin that autocompletes filenames
	XML	Red Hat	XML Language Support by Red Hat
	Beautify	HookyQR	Beautify javascript, JSON, CSS, Sass, and HTML in Visual Studio Code
	vscode-icons	VSCode Icons Team	Add useful icons based on file types to the Explorer view

Git

Icon	Title	Author	Description
	GitLens - Git supercharged	Eric Amodio	Visualize code authorship at a glance via Git blame annotations and code lens, seamlessly navigate and explore Git repositories, gain valuable insights via powerful comparison commands, and so much more
	GitHub Pull Requests	GitHub	This extension allows you to review and manage GitHub pull requests in Visual Studio Code

Documentation

Icon	Title	Author	Description
	Capitalize	Viable lab	Capitalize titles according to The Chicago Manual of Style
	Markdown All in One	Yu Zhang	All you need to write Markdown (keyboard shortcuts, table of contents, auto preview and more)
	Code Spell Checker	Street Side Software	Spelling checker for source code
	Word Count	Microsoft	Word count for Markdown documents
	Paste Image	mushan	Paste image directly from clipboard to Markdown

Utilities

Icon	Title	Author	Description
	GistPad	Live Share Contrib	VS Code extension for managing and sharing code snippets, notes and interactive samples using GitHub Gists
	Todo Plus	Azad Ratzki	Create and manage TODO comments with enhanced functionality
	Partial Diff	Ryuichi Inagaki	Compare (diff) text selections within a file, across files, or to the clipboard
	Permute Lines	earshinov	Reverse, Unique, Shuffle lines as in Sublime Text

Microsoft

Icon	Title	Author	Description
	PowerShell	Microsoft	Develop PowerShell scripts in Visual Studio Code!
	SQL Server (mssql)	Microsoft	Develop Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and SQL Data Warehouse everywhere
	IIS Express	Microsoft	This allows you to run the current folder as a website in IIS Express

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