Command Line

Visual Studio Code has a powerful command line interface that lets you control how your launch the editor. You can open or diff files, install extensions, even change the display language on startup.

Launching from the command line

You can launch VS Code from the command line to quickly open a file, folder, or project. Typically, you open VS Code within the context of a folder. To do this type:

code .

If you are using the Visual Studio Code Insiders build, you would type the following command:

code-insiders .

Tip: We have instructions for Mac users in our Setup topic that enable you to start VS Code from within a terminal. We add the VS Code executable to the PATH environment variable on Windows and Linux automatically during installation.

Sometimes you will want to open or create a file. If the specified file does not exist, VS Code will create them for you:

code index.html style.css readme.md

Tip: You can have as many file names as you want separated by spaces.

Additional command line arguments

Here are optional command line arguments you can use when starting VS Code at the command line via code:

Argument	Description
-h or --help	Print usage
-v or --version	Print VS Code version (for example, 1.12.2) and GitHub commit id.
-n or --new-window	Opens a new session of VS Code instead of restoring the previous session (default).
-r or --reuse-window	Forces opening a file or folder in the last active window.
-g or --goto	When used with file:line[:character], opens a file at a specific line and optional character position. This argument is provided since some operating systems permit : in a file name.
file	Name of a file to open. If the file doesn't exist, it will be created and marked as edited. You can specify multiple files by separating each file name with a space.
file:line[:character]	Name of a file to open at the specified line and optional character position. You can specify multiple files in this manner, but you must use the -g argument (once) before using the file:line[:character] specifier.
folder	Name of a folder to open. You can specify multiple folders and there will be an instance for each folder.
-d or --diff	Open a file difference editor. Requires two file paths as arguments.
-w or --wait	Wait for the window to be closed before returning.
--locale <locale>	Set the display language (locale) for the VS Code session. (for example, en-US or zh-TW)
--user-data-dir <dir>	Specifies the directory that user data is kept in, useful when running as root.
Extensions
--install-extension <ext>	Install an extension. Provide the full extension name publisher.extension as an argument.
--uninstall-extension <ext>	Uninstall an extension. Provide the full extension name publisher.extension as an argument.
--disable-extensions	Disable all installed extensions. Extensions will still be visible in the Extensions: Show Installed Extensions dropdown but they will never be activated.
--extensions-dir <dir>	Set the root path for extensions.
--list-extensions	List the installed extensions.
--show-versions	Show versions of installed extensions, when using --list-extensions
--enable-proposed-api <ext>	Enables proposed api features for an extension. Provide the full extension name publisher.extension as an argument.
Performance
-p, --performance	Start with the Developer: Startup Performance command enabled.
--disable-gpu	Disable GPU hardware acceleration.
--verbose	Print verbose output (implies --wait).
--prof-startup	Run CPU profiler during startup.

For both files and folders, you can use absolute or relative paths. Relative paths are relative to the current directory of the command prompt where you run code.

If you specify more than one file at the command line, VS Code will open only a single instance.

Opening VS Code with URLs

On Windows and macOS, you can also open projects and files using the platform's URL handling mechanism. Use the following URL formats to:

Open a project

vscode://file/FULL/PATH/TO/PROJECT/

Open a file

vscode://file/FULL/PATH/TO/FILE

Open a file to line and column

vscode://file/FULL/PATH/TO/FILE:LINE:COLUMN

Note: You can use the URL in applications such as browsers or file explorers that can parse and redirect the URL. For example on Windows, you could pass a vscode:// URL directly to the Windows Explorer or to the command line as start vscode://file/FULL/PATH/TO/FILE.

Next Steps

Read on to find out about:

• Basic Editing - Learn the basics of the VS Code editor.
• Code Navigation - VS Code lets you quickly understand and move through your source code.