Connecting with VS Code

Remotely edit files with VS Code.

Visual Studio Code provides good support for editing files on remote systems. It’s almost like editing on them on your local machine.

This support is also pretty easy to use these days:

  1. Click the ‘><’ remote connection icon in the bottom left of your VS Code window, or open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and use “Remote-SSH: Connect to Host…”

  2. Enter the remote hostname you want to connect to.

  3. Enter your password, if prompted.

  4. Once the connection is established, open your project folder by choosing the File → Open Folder menu. It will open a Linux-style folder select pane, not your usual open folder pane; enter the path to your remote project folder here. Tab-completion and similar things work.

Selecting the folder will re-open the editor window, and may require you to re-enter your password. You are now editing directly on the other computer, and the remote connection information should appear in the bottom left.

Some extensions must be installed on the remote system in order to work. Go to your Extensions and look for the ones that need to be remotely installed, and click their install button if you need them for the project you are working on.

Terminal

VS Code provides a built-in terminal that you can use. I use this for simple commands sometimes, but do most of my terminal work in a separate SSH connection in my primary terminal, with tmux.