Today Microsoft released the Visual Studio Code file/folder editor.
The first limitation is it appears to be a single-instance application.
Is there a way of getting multiple instances, or otherwise having it open multiple folders simultaneously?
Today Microsoft released the Visual Studio Code file/folder editor.
The first limitation is it appears to be a single-instance application.
Is there a way of getting multiple instances, or otherwise having it open multiple folders simultaneously?
Ctrl + Shift + N will open a new window, while Ctrl+K then releases the keys, and pressing O would open the current tab in a new window. You can then use menu File → Open Folder to have two instances of Visual Studio Code with different folders in each window.
⌘ + Shift + N and ⌘ + K for Mac.
List of helpful keyboard shortcuts can be found here.
Use
code -n
when launching the program. This "Opens a new session of Visual Studio Code instead of restoring the previous session." (from here).
The way I used this was by modifying my "Code" shortcut to include the -n
parameter:
If it does not work, restart VSCode
Ctrl + Shift + P Duplicate Workspace in New Window Enter
from: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_24#_duplicate-workspace-in-new-window
If you want to open multiple instances of the same folder, then it is not currently supported. Watch and upvote this GitHub issue if you want to see it implemented: Support to open a project folder in multiple Visual Studio Code windows
Multiple instances of the same project
WORKAROUND
You cannot open multiple instances of the same folder but a workaround I have found is to open different folders.
lib
-components
-models
-helpers
tests
So, here I might open components, models and tests in different windows and then I can view them on my three monitors.
It sounds a bit simple but this has helped me a lot.
I came here to find out how to make VSCode (Mac OS) create a new window when a file or folder is opened and VSCode is already running. The same as GitHub Atom does. The answers above haven't answered my query, bit I've found answer myself so will share.
Setting:
window.openFilesInNewWindow
- if set to on
, files will open in a new window.
window.openFoldersInNewWindow
- if set to on
, folders will open in a new window.
Bonus to make it behave like Atom: Set window.newWindowDimensions
to maximised
.
You can open multiple windows (from the menu or by running the code
executable again).
However, unfortunately there seems to be no way to actually have separate instances at the moment. For example, if you have two shells open with different environments in each (different paths, etc.), launching code
for both will result in the second window sharing the same paths as the first, and ignoring the environment it was launched from.
Multiple VS Code windows can be opened on the same effective folder if each opens the folder through a different path. For example, on Windows, a project in C:\Git\MyProject could be open in one instance of VS Code, while \MyPC\c$\Git\MyProject is open in another instance. If the admin share (c$) isn't available or suitable, an explicit share can be constructed that provides the necessary access.
No, this isn't an ideal solution.
Starting with our 0.9.0 release, we added a new setting window.reopenFolders
to control if Visual Studio Code should restore all folders of the previous session.
By default only the last active window you worked on will be restored, but if you change this setting to all
, Visual Studio Code will reopen all folders in their windows automatically.
In Linux (tested with Ubuntu and Kali Linux) you can also right click the tile on the dock and select New Window
.
On Linux you can run it with the --user-data-dir
parameter
I'm using the VSCodium version, therefore it has a different name but it should also work for the standard version
I copied the config from ~/.config/VSCodium
to a new folder VSCodium2
and can now run a second instance of codium:
codium --user-data-dir ~/.config/VSCodium2
I've also created a new .desktop file: /usr/share/applications/VSCodium2.desktop
In there I had to change the Name and Exec property to launch VSCodium2
With these settings I can run the multiple instances with my launcher
Apart from the .desktop file and the locations, all of this should also work for Windows and Mac