A new version of the popular Visual Studio Code text editor is available for download.
Visual Studio Code 1.31 ships with a number of “significant updates”, say Microsoft, that help make the editor easier to use.
For instance, VS Code no longer requires a restart when you install an extension. I found those restarts to be a real hassle: they interrupted my workflow; they slowed my productivity down. Well, no more: when you install or enable an extension in VS code 1.31 it’s ready to use, there and then.
Elsewhere, additional navigation actions have been added to the Go menu to aid discovery, while the right-click explorer context menu picks up a (long overdue) Cut item.
The new Screencast Mode will be super helpful when sharing screen recordings or doing demonstrations of features within VS Code. When activated, screencast mode highlights the position of your mouse arrow on the screen and uses an OSD for any/all keystrokes entered.
Enable Screencast Mode in VS Code via the Developer > Toggle Screencast Mode menu.
Other notable changes in VS Code 1.13:
- Line numbers hidden in ‘Zen’ mode
- Linux users can use keyboard navigation in custom menus
- Reworked tree UI with better navigation
- Multiline Problems output
- Find All References history
- Semantic selection for HTML, CSS, and JSON
- Terminal text reflow support
- Support for TypeScript 3.3.1
- Network proxy support for extensions
- Command-based user input variables
- Updated Extension API documentation
For a full list of the changes in Visual Studio Code 1.31, including background information and .gifs of features in action, check out the full release notes.
Download Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is free, open-source software built using Electron. It’s available for Windows and macOS, and both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distributions, including Ubuntu.
Do note that the official Visual Studio Code download (below) is shipped under a proprietary license:
A community maintained Snap builds is available:
While an “open source” version is available on Flathub. You can learn about the differences on the VSCode Github: