Open vault in VS Code

Open in VS Code

This plugin for Obsidian makes a ribbon button, a file explorer context menu and two commands to open your vault as a Visual Studio Code workspace:

• open-vscode: Uses child_process to launch VS Code with the code command. Currently, this is the command bound to the ribbon button.
• open-vscode-via-url: Open VS Code using a vscode:// URL

It's functionality is probably made redundant now using the Shell commands and Customizable Sidebar (or Buttons) plugins, but it'll be maintained for the foreseeable future.

You can use VS Code for various purposes with your vault, such as for git version control, markdown formatting with Prettier, linting with markdownlint, mass formatting files and more.

Context menu in file navigation.

The icons work with light and dark mode.

You can also use it as a command and assign hotkeys to it. You can disable the ribbon button in settings.

Prerequisites

For the default method of opening VS Code, you need to be able to launch VS Code from the command line.

• Either the code command needs to be on your path. Most VS Code installers handle this.
  • Special steps needed for macOS: Visual Studio Code on macOS > Launch from the command line
• Or the full path to the VS Code executable is required.
  • This is generally /usr/local/bin/code.
  • If you installed VS Code via Homebrew it will be /opt/homebrew/bin.
• Some package managers, like Flatpak limit what Obsidian can do. You'll have to make sure Obsidian can access VS Code and has the capability to spawn a child process.
• See other workarounds and discussion

For the alternative open-vscode-via-url method, your system needs to have already registered VS Code for the vscode:// URI scheme. This is done automatically for normal installs by VS Code.

Settings

• Display Ribbon Icon
• Ribbon opens via code (can alteratively open via URL method)

Template for executing the code command

You can template the command opening VS Code however you like with its provided command line arguments. This way you can technically launch any command you set, so take caution. Potential use cases include opening workspaces with .code-workspace files (e.g. for Dendron), opening specific files, folders, etc.

You can use the following variables: {{vaultpath}} (absolute), {{filepath}} (relative), {{folderpath}} (relative), {{line}} and {{ch}}. The default template is code "{{vaultpath}}" "{{vaultpath}}/{{filepath}}", which opens the current file (if there is one) in the workspace that is the vault's root folder. This gets expanded to be executed in your shell as code "C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\vault" "C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\vault/Note.md", for example.

If you want to jump to the line (and character), you can use code -g "{{vaultpath}}" "{{vaultpath}}/{{filepath}}:{{line}}:{{ch}}.
See also: VS Code CLI - Opening Files and Folders.

Settings for open-vscode-via-url

On some systems, this may be faster than using the child_process approach.
See: Opening VS Code with URLs.
The first time you use the URL method for opening, VS Code displays a confirmation dialog (that you just can hit enter on) for security reasons.

• Open current file

  Open the current file rather than the root of the Obsidian vault.

• Path to VS Code Workspace

  Defaults to the {{vaultpath}} template variable. You can set this to an absolute path to a ".code-workspace" file if you prefer to use a multi-root workspace.

• URL protocol

  You can override the default vscode:// to VS Code Insiders, VSCodium or other VS Code variants' protocol string.

Installation

You can install the plugin via the Community Plugins tab within the Obsidian app.
You can also find the plugin, Obsidian's Community Plugins website, which has 1-click install functionality.
You can install the plugin manually by copying a release to your .obsidian/plugins/open-vscode folder.

Development

This plugin follows the structure of the Obsidian Sample Plugin, see further details there.
Contributions are welcome.

If pjeby/hot-reload is installed, activated, and open-vscode is registered with hot-reload, then extra logging and DX commands to refresh settings are activated.

Credits

Original plugin by NomarCub.
If you like this plugin you can sponsor me here on GitHub: , on Ko-fi here: , or on PayPal here: .

• Toggle ribbon setting by Ozan Tellioglu.
• UseURL: open file in workspace feature and restructure by Tim Osborn.
• Go to line support by Moy.
• File explorer context menu by Quinn McHugh.

Thank you to the makers of the DEVONlink plugin, as it was a great starting point for working with ribbon icons in Obsidian.