If you haven’t heard, Visual Studio Code is now open source on GitHub. Along with this announcement, Visual Studo Code now supports 3rd party extensions!

Browsing & Installing Extensions

Inside Visual Studio Code, press CMD + Shift + P (F1 on Windows) then type ext.

Creating Extensions

Extensions are written in TypeScript, basically JavaScript with types. To create your own extension, use the Yeoman generator and generate an example plugin:

Navigate to ~/.vscode/extensions in a Terminal. Run sudo npm install -g yo generator-code && yo code. Choose New Extension (TypeScript) and name your extension. Restart Visual Studio Code and open the Developer Console. You should see a log message:

Congratulations, your extension “Test” is now active!. To edit your extension, open the src/extension.js file inside your generated extension directory. If you add node dependencies to your package.json, remember to run npm install inside your extension folder.

The WakaTime for VSCode extension is a great example to start with. Check out the extension source code from the GitHub repository. You can also use the WakaTime extension to measure how long your extension takes you to build!

Here’s the Official Extension Reference. Have fun creating new Vscode extensions!