How to run Visual Studio Code on Mac OSX

April 7, 2020

EDIT: You can just do this from Visual Studio Code now.

Terminal

Currently, there isn't an automatic method for doing this, but with a little code in your

~/.bash_profile
file, you can configure it.

code () { VSCODE_CWD="$PWD" open -n -b "com.microsoft.VSCode" --args $* ;}

Then from Terminal you can type:

code
-- opens Visual Studio Code
code .
-- opens current directory in Visual Studio Code
code somefile
-- opens somefile in Visual Studio Code

Zsh

Using Visual Studio Code on your Mac, but can't call it from Zsh?

Currently, there isn't an automatic method for doing this, but with a little code in your

.zshrc
file, you can configure it.

function code {
    if [[ $# = 0 ]]
    then
        open -a "Visual Studio Code"
    else
        local argPath="$1"
        [[ $1 = /* ]] && argPath="$1" || argPath="$PWD/${1#./}"
        open -a "Visual Studio Code" "$argPath"
    fi
}

Then from Terminal you can type:

code
-- opens Visual Studio Code
code .
-- opens current directory in Visual Studio Code
code somefile
-- opens somefile in Visual Studio Code