One Command to Share Your Entire VS Code Setup

Every extension becomes a portable install script your team can run in under a minute.

You spent hours curating your VS Code setup. The right extensions, the right config, the right workflow. Now a friend or colleague asks what you use. You could send them a screenshot and let them hunt for each extension manually. Or you could give them a single command.

VS Code’s Settings Sync exists, but it syncs your account to your machines. It does not help you share your setup with someone else’s account on their machine. For that, you need a different approach.

Exporting Your Extensions

On your machine, open a terminal and run one command. On Windows PowerShell, that command is code --list-extensions | % { "code --install-extension $_" }. On Mac or Linux, the equivalent is code --list-extensions | xargs -L 1 echo code --install-extension.

What you get back is a self-contained script. Every extension you have installed becomes a single install command. The output looks like this:

code --install-extension Angular.ng-template
code --install-extension EditorConfig.EditorConfig
code --install-extension HookyQR.beautify

Copy the entire output. Send it however you want -- Slack, email, a text file, a GitHub gist. The format does not matter because the commands are portable.

Installing on the Other Side

Your friend opens their terminal, pastes the commands, and runs them. Every extension installs in sequence. No searching the marketplace. No misspelled extension names. No “which one was it again?” conversations. The whole process takes under a minute for a typical setup.

If the code command is not recognized on their machine, they need to register it first. Open VS Code, hit Ctrl+Shift+P, type Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH, and run it. After that, the install commands work.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

The real leverage here is standardization. If you are onboarding someone onto a project, a shared extension list means everyone starts with the same linting, formatting, and language support. No more debugging issues caused by someone missing a required extension.

For teams, commit the extension list to your project repository as a text file. New developers clone the repo, run the commands, and start writing code with the correct tooling from minute one. The time savings compound with every person you onboard.

This is the smallest possible automation that makes one of the most common developer annoyances disappear entirely.