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Vikrant Negi
Vikrant Negi

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Become a VS Code Ninja with these Extensions and Tools [2020]

VS Code is undoubtedly the best editor out there especially when it comes to writing javascript. It is fast, feature rich and has huge pool of extensions available which greatly enhances developer experience.

I've been using VS Code for the past 4 years and over these years I came across many these extensions that I would like to share with you. I'm so addicted to these extensions that my developer life would be incomplete without them.

Here is a list of my VS Code extensions:

Moonlight Theme

I've a habit of changing themes quite often and this is the current theme that I'm using these days. Colors are not very light and are easy on eyes both during day and night.

Moonlight Theme

Auto Rename Tag

Automatically rename paired HTML/XML tag, same as Visual Studio IDE does.

Auto Rename Tag

Path Intellisense

Visual Studio Code plugin that autocompletes filenames. Very helpful in React projects when importing components from different folders.

Path Intellisense

SCSS IntelliSense

Advanced autocompletion and refactoring support for SCSS. Must have for front-end developers that use Sass.

SCSS IntelliSense

Placeholder Images

Generate and insert placeholder images into your HTML. Easy to find placeholders images directly in the VS Code.

Placeholder Images

Live Server

Launch a development local Server with live reload feature for static & dynamic pages.

Live Server

Prettier - Code formatter

Code formatter using prettier.

Prettier - Code formatter

Reactjs code snippets

Code snippets for Reactjs development in ES6 syntax.

Reactjs code snippets

Settings Sync

Must have extension in my opinion, it synchronize all your VS Code Settings, Snippets, Themes, File Icons, Launch, Keybindings, Workspaces and Extensions Across Multiple Machines Using GitHub Gist.

Very helpful in case you change your development machine and want to import all your previous VS Code data.

Settings Sync

Better Comments

Improve your code commenting by annotating with alert, informational, TODOs, and more!

Better Comments

Bracket Pair Colorizer

A customizable extension for colorizing matching brackets.

Bracket Pair Colorizer

Code Spell Checker

If you are like me who can write a single word without mistake this extension is a must have. Checks your code for spell errors and provide suggestions.

Code Spell Checker

ESLint

Integrates ESLint JavaScript into VS Code.

ESLint

Import Cost

Display import/require package size in the editor.

Import Cost

Quokka.js

Live Scratchpad for JavaScript. Write Javascript and see your outputs in the editor itself. Also has a Interactive Examples which are useful for both experienced developers (as references) and for new developers (to learn).

Quokka.js

TabNine

Another must have extension. TabNine is a all-language autocompleter — which uses machine learning to help you write code faster.

This is a Dark Magic extension, after installing and using it for sometime it gives very accurate suggestions which leave you awestruck.

TabNine

vscode-styled-components

Syntax highlighting and IntelliSense for styled-components.

vscode-styled-components

Visual Studio IntelliCode

The Visual Studio IntelliCode extension provides AI-assisted development features for Python, TypeScript/JavaScript and Java developers in Visual Studio Code, with insights based on understanding your code context combined with machine learning.

Visual Studio IntelliCode

Bonus

OpenInCode

📂 Finder toolbar app to open current folder in Visual Studio Code

Closing

I'll keep updating this list with new extensions that I find. Feel free to suggest the extensions that I might have missing. I would love to know what new extensions developers are using.

I've also created a git repo with the VS Code extensions and settings that I frequently use. Find the repo here

Cover image credit - Photo by Ferenc Almasi on Unsplash

Latest comments (27)

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ankurk91 profile image
Ankur K

Or purchase JetBrains WebStorm :)

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maskedman99 profile image
Rohit Prasad

Thanks for Import Cost.

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aronjohnson profile image
Aron Johnson

Thanks! Bracket Pair Colorizer should be super handy when I'm working with JSON files.

I'll echo what some others have already mentioned. GitLens and the YAML extension by RedHat are both great.

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chanaeva profile image
Chana Reynolds

This is a great list! I’m excited to try a few out.
Have you heard of the LiveShare plugin for pair coding? It’s pretty dope. ☺️

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

Yeah, I'm aware of the plugin but I've never used it. But it good for people who do pair coding. Thanks for sharing.

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keshriabhi profile image
Abhishek keshri

That was amazing!

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

thanks bro.

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robertotonino profile image
Roberto Tonino

Is it just me or the Bracket Pair Colorizer extension heavily impacts editor performance? I’m talking about files with at least 4000 LOC, and obviously about using it with other extensions, like GitLens, that depend on the written code

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

I never came across such issue. Not sure if others have the same issue or not.

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j_crestel profile image
Jérémy Crestel

There is a v2 for Bracket Pair Colorizer that uses the same bracket parsing engine as VSCode, greatly increasing speed and accuracy.

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

this is great news. I'm installing new version.

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robertotonino profile image
Roberto Tonino

@j_crestel yeah already know that, I was talking about that version (but I didn't mention it, I'm sorry)

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gingerbreadfork profile image
Gingerbreadfork

Thanks for the post, Bracket Pair Colorizer turned out very useful for a problem I was having yesterday which resulted in a lot more attention to detail than will be required now.

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kasenda profile image
Tresor

Thnks for this article

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

thanks

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ilterkavlak profile image
ilterkavlak • Edited

It also worth to mention the thundra plugin where you can remotely debug your AWS lambda function docs.thundra.io/ide-integrations/v.... This looks also really cool

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robsonsobral profile image
Robson Sobral • Edited

Here we go...

  • Calculate, to make in code arithmetic calculations
  • Code Time to keep track of the time spent in every workspace / project
  • Editor Config to make all developers in project to respect IDE configuration rules
  • Faker to generate fake data
  • File Utils to move, rename, duplicate or delete files in a better way
  • GitLens
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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

I'll definitely check these out. thanks

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worcel profile image
Eitan Worcel

Nice list, thanks for sharing.
As security is usually not top mind for most, we've recently contributed this plugin hclsw.co/CodeSweep to the VSCode community, aiming to make it easy for developers to secure their applications. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

ok i'll check it out as well. thanks

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fiqrisr profile image
Fiqri Syah Redha

Nice! I've installed almost all of them.

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

great.

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robertobutti profile image
Roberto B.

Great post! thank you for sharing!
I used to work with GitHub Actions (based on YAML file) and I would suggest also a YAML extension: dev.to/robertobutti/vscode-how-to-...

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi • Edited

nice to know that about it. Thanks for sharing.

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mnabeelp profile image
Mohammed Nabeel

Cool. Thanks for valuable info.

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iarmankhan profile image
Arman Khan

Great post! Didn't know about some of it. Will checkout

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vikrantnegi profile image
Vikrant Negi

great.