According to the 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 74.48% of 71,010 participants said they used Visual Studio Code (VS Code)—this stat has steadily increased over the years. VS Code has become the go-to code editor for developers worldwide due to its versatility and extensive customization options.
But what sets it apart and makes it truly exceptional? The answer lies in its vast ecosystem of extensions. These extensions unlock the true potential of VS Code, elevating it to a whole new level of functionality and productivity.
Whether you’re a JavaScript aficionado, a Python guru, or a developer working with popular technology stacks, there’s an extension for everyone.
In this article, we explore and group together a curated selection of VS Code extensions that will help enhance your productivity.
9 General VS Code Extensions to Improve Productivity
Let’s start by introducing some general extensions that enhance productivity and provide a better user experience in VSCode.
1. Prettier
Prettier is a widely adopted code formatter that enforces consistent code style across your projects. It supports various programming languages and automatically formats your code according to predefined rules, enhancing readability and reducing style-related conflicts.
Features:
- Supports various programming languages, including JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, and more.
- Automatically formats code according to predefined rules.
- Enforces consistent code style across your projects.
- Integrates with VS Code’s formatting options and can be triggered on save or through keyboard shortcuts.
2. Remote SSH
The Remote – SSH extension for Visual Studio Code allows you to work on remote servers or virtual machines using the secure SSH protocol. It provides a seamless development experience by enabling you to edit files, run commands, and debug applications directly from your local VS Code instance in remote environments.
Features:
- Connect to remote servers or virtual machines using SSH.
- Edit files on remote systems as if they were local.
- Run commands and scripts on remote machines.
- Debug applications running on remote environments.
- Seamless integration with VS Code’s rich editing and debugging features.
3. Live Share
Live share enables real-time collaboration with other developers by allowing you to share your development environment. It allows for shared editing, debugging, and terminal sessions, fostering effective teamwork and enabling seamless pair programming.
Features:
- Real-time collaboration with other developers.
- Shared editing, debugging, and terminal sessions.
- Integrated chat functionality for effective communication.
- Collaborative code review and pair programming.
4. Better Comments
Better comments adds color-coded comments to your code, making it easier to distinguish different types of comments. You can use different prefixes to highlight important notes, TODOs, warnings, and more.
Features:
- Supports custom comment types and prefixes.
- Improves code comprehension and organization.
5. CodeSnap
CodeSnap simplifies the process of taking code screenshots. It captures your code snippets and generates an image file that you can easily share with others, making it ideal for documentation, tutorials, and sharing code on social media platforms.
Features:
- Customizable code snapshot settings, including theme, font size, and more.
- Supports various image formats, such as PNG, JPEG, and SVG.
6. Code Runner
The Code Runner extension provides a convenient way to quickly run code snippets or entire files in various programming languages from within Visual Studio Code. It eliminates the need to switch between the code editor and a separate terminal, allowing you to test and execute code instantly.
Features:
- Execute code snippets or entire files in various programming languages.
- Support for a wide range of programming languages, including JavaScript, Python, Java, C++, and more.
- Customizable execution settings and command shortcuts.
- Ability to run code in the terminal or output pane.
- Supports code execution with input/output.
- Automatic selection of the appropriate compiler or interpreter based on the file’s language.
7. Path Intellisense
Path intellisense simplifies file path entry by offering intelligent autocompletion for file paths in your code. It eliminates typos and ensures accuracy when referencing files or modules within your project.
Features:
- Supports relative and absolute paths.
- Works seamlessly with various programming languages and frameworks.
8. vscode-icons
vscode-icons brings a touch of visual brilliance to your coding workspace by replacing the default file icons with a vast collection of attractive and intuitive icons.
Features:
- Provides a wide range of icons for different file types, folders, and popular programming languages.
- Offers various customization options, allowing you to adjust the icon size, opacity, and enable/disable specific icon sets to suit your preference and coding style.
- Assign specific icons to folders, making it easier to visually distinguish between different parts of your project.
9. Night Owl
Night owl is a visually stunning theme for VS Code that provides a soothing and eye-friendly color palette for your code editor.
Features:
- Dark theme that reduces eye strain, especially during long coding sessions.
- Offers vibrant and well-defined syntax highlighting for a wide range of programming languages.
- Allows you to personalize the theme by selecting from a range of accent colors.
- Provides high contrast and legible text.
7 Web Development VS Code Extensions to Boost Productivity
Web development is an ever-evolving field, and developers are constantly seeking tools and technologies that can enhance their productivity. Here are some extensions that will help boost your productivity:
1. Live Server
Live Server is a fantastic extension that allows you to create a local development server with live reloading. It enables you to preview your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript changes in real time, saving you the hassle of manually refreshing the browser.
Features:
- Launch a local development server with live reloading.
- Automatic browser refresh on file changes.
- Support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other web development files.
- Customizable server settings for port number, root directory, and more.
2. Auto Rename Tag
Auto Rename Tag is a handy extension that automatically renames HTML or XML tags when you modify the opening or closing tag. It saves you time and ensures consistency when working with markup languages.
Features:
- Ensures consistency and saves time when working with markup languages.
- Works seamlessly with Emmet abbreviations and snippets.
3. SVG Preview
SVG Preview is a useful extension for web developers working with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). It provides a live preview of SVG files directly in the editor, allowing you to see the changes you make in real-time.
Features:
- Supports zooming and panning within the preview.
- Ideal for web developers
4. HTML CSS Support
The HTML CSS Support extension provides enhanced CSS support within HTML files. It offers intelligent suggestions and auto-completion for CSS properties, ensuring faster and more accurate coding.
Features:
- Offers intelligent autocompletion for HTML and CSS code, reducing manual typing and improving efficiency.
- Provides CSS class and ID suggestions based on the existing code.
- Generates CSS property suggestions with vendor prefixing.
- Supports Emmet abbreviations for fast HTML and CSS code generation.
5. IntelliSense for CSS class names
When working with complex CSS class names in HTML, remembering and typing them accurately can be challenging. The IntelliSense for CSS class names in HTML extension provides intelligent suggestions and auto-completion for CSS class names. It analyzes your CSS files and provides a list of available class names, making it easier to select the appropriate class name without typos or mistakes.
Features:
- Provides intelligent autocompletion for CSS class names in HTML, CSS, SCSS, and Less files.
- Works seamlessly with CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, and more.
- Improves productivity by speeding up class name selection.
6. CSS Peek
CSS Peek is a powerful extension that enhances CSS development by allowing you to peek into the associated CSS styles directly from HTML or JavaScript code. With a simple mouse hover over a CSS class or ID, CSS Peek reveals the corresponding styles in a peek window, eliminating the need to switch between files. CSS Peek is instrumental when working with large codebases or intricate CSS dependencies.
Features:
- Supports both inline and external CSS styles.
- Enhances code understanding and navigation.
7. GitLens
GitLens is a powerful extension that integrates Git capabilities directly into your editor. With GitLens, you can explore code authorship, review commit history, and gain valuable insights into code changes with line-by-line blame annotations.
Features:
- Inline Git blame annotations for each line of code.
- Commit details, including author, date, and message, displayed on hover.
- Current line and code lens annotations showing Git blame and commit information.
- Seamless integration with Git commands and repository navigation.
5 JavaScript VS Code Extensions to Boost Productivity
In JavaScript development, having the right tools at your disposal can significantly improve your productivity and code quality. Here are some that can help you:
1. ESLint
ESLint is a widely adopted linter that helps you catch errors, enforce coding standards, and improve code quality in JavaScript and TypeScript.
Features:
- Provides instant feedback and highlights code issues as you type.
- Allows you to customize its rules based on your project’s specific requirements, ensuring consistency across your codebase.
- Detects errors but can also automatically fix certain issues, such as indentation and spacing, helping you maintain clean and well-formatted code.
- Supports the use of plugins and custom rules, allowing you to tailor it to your project’s unique needs.
2. JavaScript (ES6) code snippets
JavaScript (ES6) code snippets extension offers a collection of handy code snippets that can save you time and effort while writing JavaScript code.
Features:
- Provides a comprehensive library of code snippets for common JavaScript tasks, making it easier to write code faster.
- Snippets include dynamic placeholders that allow you to quickly fill in variable names and other necessary information, improving coding efficiency.
- Snippets are specifically designed for ES6 syntax and features, enabling you to leverage the latest JavaScript capabilities effortlessly.
- Allows you to modify and create your own code snippets, tailoring them to match your coding style and project requirements.
3. Quokka.js
Quokka.js is a live scratchpad for JavaScript that offers real-time feedback and execution results as you type. This extension can significantly speed up your development workflow.
Features:
- Evaluates your JavaScript code as you type, displaying results instantly within the VS Code editor.
- Provides inline annotations to indicate the output and the values of variables, making it easier to understand code behavior.
- Offers insights into expressions, allowing you to see the results and effects of each line of code, helping with debugging and troubleshooting.
- Allows you to log values and display them in the editor, providing additional visibility into code execution flow.
4. npm Intellisense
npm Intellisense saves you time and effort by providing intelligent auto-completion for npm package imports. It suggests package names as you type, making it effortless to import dependencies into your project.
Features:
- Speeds up the process of importing dependencies.
- Works seamlessly with JavaScript and TypeScript projects.
5. Import Cost
Import Cost provides real-time feedback on the size of imported JavaScript or TypeScript modules. It displays the import size directly in the editor, helping you optimize your bundle size and identify potential performance bottlenecks.
Features:
Supports multiple module systems, such as:
- Default importing:
import Func from 'utils'; - Entire content importing:
import * as Utils from 'utils'; - Selective importing:
import {Func} from 'utils'; - Selective importing with alias:
import {orig as alias} from 'utils'; - Submodule importing:
import Func from 'utils/Func'; - Require:
const Func = require('utils').Func;
5 Python VS Code Extensions to Boost Productivity
There are numerous VS Code extensions available for Python that can significantly enhance your productivity as a developer. Here are five popular ones:
1. Python
The Python extension for Visual Studio Code is an essential tool for Python developers. It provides a comprehensive set of features that streamline Python development, making it easier to write, debug, and test Python code.
Features:
- Offers intelligent code completion, suggestions, and auto-imports to enhance productivity.
- Supports code formatting using popular Python formatters like Black and autopep8, ensuring consistent code style.
- Performs real-time code analysis and provides feedback on potential errors, coding standards, and best practices using tools like pylint.
- Enables debugging Python code directly within VS Code, with support for breakpoints, variable inspection, and step-by-step execution.
- Provides integration with popular Python testing frameworks like pytest and unittest, allowing you to run and debug tests seamlessly.
- Offers support for managing and activating virtual environments, ensuring project isolation and dependency management.
2. Pylance
Pylance is a powerful language server extension for Python in VS Code. It significantly enhances the IntelliSense capabilities, code navigation, and type checking for Python code.
Features:
- Provides faster and more accurate code completion suggestions based on static type analysis and type inference.
- Performs static type checking to catch type-related errors and improve code quality.
- Allows easy navigation through Python code, including symbol search, definition peeking, and references.
- Shows detailed documentation and function signatures for Python objects, improving code understanding and reducing lookup time.
- Supports type hints and annotations to improve code readability and maintainability.
- Pylance is optimized for fast startup and responsiveness, providing a smooth development experience.
3. Jupyter
The Jupyter extension allows you to work with Jupyter notebooks directly within VS Code. It offers a seamless integration that combines the power of Jupyter’s interactive computing with the features and productivity of VS Code.
Features:
- Provides a notebook editor with support for Markdown, code cells, and rich text formatting.
- Enables executing code cells within the notebook and displays the output directly in the editor.
- Allows easy navigation between cells, reordering, and adding new cells to the notebook.
- Provides options to start, stop, and switch kernels for different languages, including Python.
- Allows inspecting variables and their values at different points in the notebook.
- Supports exporting notebooks to various formats, such as HTML, PDF, and Markdown, and allows sharing notebooks with others.
4. Django
The Django extension is specifically designed for Django web framework development in VS Code. It offers a range of features to enhance productivity when working on Django projects.
Features:
- Provides features for creating and managing Django projects and applications.
- Offers intelligent code completion for Django-specific syntax, including models, views, forms, and template tags.
- Highlights Django template syntax and provides a visual distinction from other code elements.
- Allows previewing Django template rendering directly within the editor.
- Provides integration with the Django shell, allowing direct interaction with the Django project environment.
- Offers a collection of code snippets for common Django patterns and shortcuts, speeding up development.
5. Flask Snippets
Flask Snippets is a handy extension that provides a collection of code snippets for the Flask web framework in VS Code. It simplifies the process of writing Flask code by offering ready-to-use snippets for common Flask patterns and shortcuts.
Features:
- Provides a wide range of Flask-specific code snippets, including route decorators, template rendering, database integration, and more.
- Offers shortcuts for frequently used Flask code patterns, reducing manual typing and saving development time.
- Allows generating a Flask project skeleton with a basic directory structure and essential files to kick-start Flask development.
- Provides integration with Flask’s command-line interface, allowing running Flask-specific commands directly within VS Code.
- Enhances code completion for Flask-specific keywords, functions, and objects to improve productivity.
4 Additional VS Code Extensions for Enhanced Development Experience
In addition to the previously mentioned extensions, several other VS Code extensions are worth knowing and can greatly enhance your development experience across various programming languages and frameworks. Let’s explore some of these extensions:
1. GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an innovative AI-powered coding assistant developed by GitHub and OpenAI. It uses machine learning models trained on a vast amount of code to provide intelligent code suggestions and completions.
Features:
- Analyzes your code context and provides highly accurate code completions, saving you time and effort.
- Supports a wide range of programming languages, including JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Go, and more.
- Generates documentation snippets for functions, classes, and methods, helping you understand APIs and libraries more easily.
- Understands the context of your code and generates suggestions that align with your programming style and patterns.
2. Tabnine AI Autocomplete
Tabnine AI Autocomplete is an AI-powered autocompletion extension that takes code completion to a whole new level. It uses machine learning models trained on massive amounts of code to provide highly accurate and context-aware code suggestions.
Features:
- Offers intelligent suggestions based on the code you’ve written, saving you time and effort.
- Predicts the next line of code based on your current context, reducing the need for manual typing.
- Supports a wide range of programming languages, making it versatile for different projects.
3. Markdown All in One
Markdown All in One is a comprehensive extension for working with Markdown files in VS Code. It simplifies the creation and editing of Markdown documents by providing a wide range of features and shortcuts. From basic formatting to advanced functionalities, Markdown All in One enhances the writing experience and productivity for Markdown users.
Features:
- Syntax highlighting and preview of Markdown content
- Shortcuts for common Markdown elements and formatting
- Table of Contents generation for easy navigation
- Keyboard shortcuts for efficient editing and formatting
4. Regex Previewer
Regex Previewer is a handy extension for working with regular expressions in VS Code. It allows you to test and debug regular expressions in real time, ensuring they match the desired patterns accurately. With Regex Previewer, you can save time by rapidly iterating and fine-tuning your regular expressions within the editor itself.
Features:
- Real-time preview of regex matches in the editor
- Highlighting of matches and capturing groups
- Interactive debugging and testing of regular expressions
- Support for multiple regex flavors and options
Summary
With its extensive extensions and customizable features, VS Code is a versatile code editor suitable for your web projects. Whether it’s an application, database, or website, hosting and managing any of these becomes effortless with Kinsta.
What’s the VS Code extension you use the most? Which one do you think should be added to this article? Let us know in the comments.
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