I recently moved to a new job, and realised that for my development environment setup, I really needed a list of useful VS Code extensions. This blog post is that list…

Extensions I’m Using

More and more, VS Code is my main editor of choice (for web development, scripting or simply taking notes), with Visual Studio really only being used for heavyweight .NET projects (support for C# projects in VS Code still leaves something to be desired). As such, I have a large list of useful extensions for VS Code:

• Azure Account
  • The Azure Account extension provides a single Azure sign in and subscription filtering experience for all other Azure extensions. It makes Azure’s Cloud Shell service available in VS Code’s integrated terminal.
• Azure Policy
  • An extension to manage Azure Policy definitions
• Azure Resources
  • View and manage Azure resources directly from VS Code.
• Azure Storage
  • Use this extension to deploy static websites and Single Page Apps (SPAs) and browse Azure Blob Containers, File Shares, Tables, and Queues.
• Bicep
  • An extension to provide intellisense, refactoring, formatting and validation for Bicep scripts
• Code Spell Checker
  • A basic spell checker that works well with camelCase code.
• C#
  • The C# extension for Visual Studio Code
• Docker
  • The Docker extension makes it easy to build, manage, and deploy containerized applications from Visual Studio Code.
• EditorConfig
  • This plugin attempts to override user/workspace settings with settings found in .editorconfig files. No additional or vscode-specific files are required.
• jshint
  • Integrates JSHint into VS Code
• markdownlint
  • Markdown/CommonMark linting and style checking for Visual Studio Code
• PowerShell
  • provides PowerShell language support for VS Code
• Prettier
  • Prettier is an opinionated code formatter that enforces a consistent style by parsing your code and re-printing it with its own rules that take the maximum line length into account, wrapping code when necessary.
• PrintCode
  • An extension to print code from VS Code
• Remote Development
  • An extension pack for remote development
  • Contains 3 extensions:
    • Remote - Containers
    • Remote - SSH
    • Remote - WSL
• TODO Highlight
  • An incredibly useful extension that allows you to highlight TODO, FIXME and other annotations within your code.
• Word Count Added on 28/03/2022
  • A simple extension originally developed for a tutorial on writing extensions for VS Code, it gives a word count when writing Markdown files. Very useful when drafting blog posts.

Some people might be wondering why I don’t just use Setting Sync to keep my extensions synchronized across different VS Code installs. I personally don’t like using Setting Sync on work installs of VS Code and if possible, I avoid using personal accounts on work machines.

Extensions To Evaluate

These are extensions that I’ve either started using recently and can’t yet give a recommendation for it, or extensions I intend to evaluate soon:

• Azure Tools
  • This extension combines up a number of Azure packages to support working with App Service, Cosmos DB, Azure Functions, Azure Static Sites, Virtual Machines, Azure Container Registry, ARM Templates and Bicep
• Better Comment
  • An extension to use annotations to develop more informative code comments
• ESLint
  • Integrates ESLint into VS Code.
• Javascript-Essentials
  • An extension pack to add several useful JavaScript extensions including ESLint, jshint, npm intellisense and JavaScript (ES6) Code snippets
• LinkCheckMD
  • Updated on 04/03/2022 - I have tried this extension for a week now and I can’t recommend it, as it doesn’t allow you to configure what rules are run, for example disabling the check for country codes.
  • An extension to check links within a Markdown document
• Markdown All in One
• .NET Core Extension Pack
  • A large extension pack for .NET Core development
• .NET Core Snippet Pack
  • A pack of around 120 snippets for .NET Core development
• .NET Core Test Explorer
  • Test Explorer for .NET Core
• OpenAPI (Swagger) Editor
  • An extension that adds support for the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) in JSON or YAML format. Features include SwaggerUI and ReDoc preview,IntelliSense, linting, schema enforcement, code navigation, definition links, snippets, static security analysis.
• Visual Studio Keymap
  • An extension to map popular Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts to Visual Studio Code.

Just to point out, there are some awesome tips and tricks to improve your productivity with VS Code at Visual Studio Code Tips and Tricks. You can find further extensions and resources at https://github.com/viatsko/awesome-vscode.