How to call VS Code Editor from command line

Question

The question says it all.

How can I call VS Code editor from

• windows cmd
• linux and mac terminal

e.g. for notepad++ I write

> start notepad++ test.txt

By the way, the editor is awesome (cross-platform)! Thank you Nadella!

You can download it from microsoft

Answer 1

VS Code is a must have code editor for 2018

For Windows 10 users a lot is possible, the same way the Mac OS users type code . .

Look for you VS Code \bin folder path e.g C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\bin . The bin folder includes a file called code.cmd

Follow the steps below and be proud of the OS you use.

1. Search for "Advanced System Setting" from Start.
   

2. Click on Environment Variables
   

3. On System Variables choose "path" from Variable tab and click on Edit.
   

4. Click on New on the right side of the popup window.
   

5. Copy your path from the Explorer's breadcrumb path and paste it into the new opened path in step 4, example:- C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\bin
   

6. Click Ok on all the open windows to confirm changes and restart your cmd
   

7. Go to your cmd and navigate to you working directory on server and type code .

C:>cd wamp64\www\react-app> code . to open with VS Code on Windows.

Visual Studio Code also includes a command prompt (terminal) window and you can open one or more of them with
Ctrl + ` on your keyboard.

Hope this helps some one like it did to many of us.

Answer 2

This works for Windows:

CMD> start vscode://file/o:/git/libzmq/builds/msvc/vs2017/libzmq.sln

But if the filepath has spaces, normally one would add double quotes around it, like this:

CMD> start "vscode://file/o:/git/lib zmq/builds/msvc/vs2017/libzmq.sln"

But this messes up with start, which can take a double-quoted title, so it will create a window with this name as the title and not open the project.

CMD> start "title" "vscode://file/o:/git/lib zmq/builds/msvc/vs2017/libzmq.sln"

Answer 3

typing "code" in dos command prompt worked for me

Answer 4

Per the docs:

Mac OS X

1. Download Visual Studio Code for Mac OS X.
2. Double-click on VSCode-osx.zip to expand the contents.
3. Drag Visual Studio Code.app to the Applications folder, making it available in the Launchpad.
4. Add VS Code to your Dock by right-clicking on the icon and choosing Options, Keep in Dock.

Tip: If you want to run VS Code from the terminal, append the following to your ~/.bash_profile file (~/.zshrc in case you use zsh).

code () { VSCODE_CWD="$PWD" open -n -b "com.microsoft.VSCode" --args $* ;}

Now, you can simply type code . in any folder to start editing files in that folder.

Tip: You can also add it to VS Code Insiders build by changing "com.microsoft.VSCodeInsiders". Also if you don't to type the whole word code, just change it to c.

Linux

1. Download Visual Studio Code for Linux.
2. Make a new folder and extract VSCode-linux-x64.zip inside that folder.
3. Double click on Code to run Visual Studio Code.

Tip: If you want to run VS Code from the terminal, create the following link substituting /path/to/vscode/Code with the absolute path to the Code executable

sudo ln -s /path/to/vscode/Code /usr/local/bin/code

Now, you can simply type code . in any folder to start editing files in that folder.

Answer 5

For command line heads you can also run

sudo ln -s "/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin/code" /usr/local/bin/code

this will do the exact same thing as the Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH command feature in VSCode.

Answer 6

In the case of Linux and Mac, you want to navigate to the directory that you extracted the VSCode files using the 'cd' command. For example:

cd ~/Downloads/VSCode

Then you start the application by running..

./Code

'Code' being the name of the executable.

If you have root access on the machine, you can configure the system to allow you to start VSCode from anywhere by linking it to /usr/bin, where links to executables are often stored.

sudo ln -s /path/to/VSCode/folder/Code /usr/bin/Code    

You can now launch VSCode from anywhere by typing:

Code