How do I back up my VS Code settings and list of installed extensions?

Solution 1:

I've submitted an answer for this on the main StackOverflow site - pasted below for context

I've need to do this myself a few times - especially when installing on another machine.

Depending on your platform VS Code looks for your extensions folder (.vscode/extensions) on one of the following paths:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions
• Mac: ~/.vscode/extensions
• Linux: ~/.vscode/extensions

That should show you a list of the extensions

I've also had success using Visual Studio Code Settings Sync Extension to sync settings to GitHub gist

EDIT: In the lastest release of VSCode (May 2016) it is now possible to list the installed extension in the command line

code --list-extensions

Solution 2:

So as treehead's edit or MarkP's answer showed you can now list all extensions installed so the way to install that list of extensions would be to:

code --list-extensions >> vs_code_extensions_list.txt

Transfer the newly created file to the machine that you want to install those extensions to. On that machine you would:

cat vs_code_extensions_list.txt | xargs -n 1 code --install-extension

Which will then go through each extension in that file and install the extension.

If you want a clean install (AKA remove all existing extensions on that machine) you could run this before you install the new extensions (otherwise you will remove those new extensions too). BE CAREFUL as this will remove all extensions in VS Code:

code --list-extensions | xargs -n 1 code --uninstall-extension