Supercharge your coding experience with the top VSCode Plugins

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is an incredibly popular and powerful open-source code editor known for its flexibility and extensibility. One way to customize your VSCode experience is by installing plugins, which can help boost productivity and make your development process smoother. In this post, we'll take a look at a selection of plugins that every VSCode user should consider adding to their toolkit.

Project Manager

If you're weary of juggling multiple VSCode windows for each project you're working on, Project Manager is the ideal solution for you. This handy plugin streamlines project navigation, eliminating the need for folder exploration or multiple VSCode instances. Save your favourite projects and easily access them directly from the editor's sidebar.

Material Icon Theme

I like to have nice icons in my code editor and the Material Icon Theme plugin adds a beautiful set of icons for files and folders in the VSCode file explorer, based on the popular Material Design guidelines.

Peacock

Peacock is one of my favourite visual plugins for VSCode that lets you change the colour of the VSCode workspace, allowing you to differentiate between multiple instances of the editor easily. This is particularly useful when working on multiple projects simultaneously and switching between them frequently.

GitLens

GitLens is a powerful and feature-rich VSCode plugin that supercharges your Git experience within the editor. With GitLens, you can effortlessly navigate and explore your project's Git history, visualize code authorship, and view detailed commit information directly in the editor. The plugin also offers advanced features such as blame annotations, inline change tracking, and commit searching, all designed to help you better understand your code's evolution and make more informed decisions during development. GitLens is an essential tool for developers working with Git, helping to simplify complex workflows and improve collaboration within your team.

Auto Rename Tag

Auto Rename Tag is a simple yet powerful plugin that automatically renames the closing tag when you update the opening tag. This helps keep your code clean and eliminates the need to manually update both tags, saving time and reducing the likelihood of errors.

Auto-Open Markdown Preview

The Auto-Open Markdown Preview plugin automatically opens a side-by-side preview of your Markdown files as you edit them. Say goodbye to repeatedly clicking the Preview button or using keyboard shortcuts when opening the .md file.

DotENV

DotENV adds syntax highlighting and autocompletion for .env files. This is incredibly useful when working with environment variables, as it helps you quickly identify and manage key-value pairs in your .env files.

Import Cost

Import Cost displays the size of imported packages inline, right next to the import statement. This helps you stay aware of each dependency's impact on your application's bundle size.

Prettier

Prettier is a popular code formatter that enforces a consistent style across your JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, and other files. The Prettier plugin for VSCode integrates this powerful tool directly into your editor, allowing you to automatically format your code as you save or with a simple keyboard shortcut. Nice to have.

Indent-Rainbow

Indent-Rainbow is a simple plugin that colour-codes your indentation levels, making it easier to identify nested code blocks.

Todo Highlight

Todo Highlight is a plugin that highlights TODO and FIXME comments in your code, making it easy to spot areas that require attention or future improvements

Todo Tree

Todo Tree is a powerful VSCode plugin that scans your entire project for TODO, FIXME and other customizable tags and organizes them into a convenient tree view in the editor's sidebar. This makes it incredibly easy to keep track of pending tasks and quickly navigate to the relevant code sections.

Better Comments

Better Comments improves the readability of the code comments by allowing you to categorize and colour-code them. I like this one as you can easily differentiate between regular comments, questions, todos, and more.

Turbo Console Log

Turbo Console Log is a time-saving VSCode plugin that streamlines the process of adding console.log statements to your JavaScript code. With a simple keyboard shortcut or right-click menu option, the plugin automatically generates a console.log statement with the appropriate variable name and context information. This not only saves you time from typing repetitive log statements but also enhances the readability of your logs by providing consistent formatting.

VSCode Pets

Craving a little companionship while coding but need a real pet? Give the vscode-pets plugin a try! This delightful extension brings adorable virtual pets right into your VSCode environment. Watch them wander around as you code, providing a lighthearted touch to your development experience.

Alright, that wraps it up for now. Given the vast array of plugins in the marketplace, selecting the best ones can be daunting. If you've discovered any great plugins that have significantly improved your coding experience, please share them in the comments.