What are profiles?

  • 3 minutes

VS Code profiles provide a way to organize and isolate customizations within the editor. A profile represents a specific set of configurations that can be easily activated or deactivated. With profiles, users can maintain separate configurations for different projects or teams, to help ensure a seamless transition between development environments.

What's in a profile?

Each profile in VS Code can include settings, extensions, key bindings, snippets, and tasks. You can create profiles based on existing profiles or templates, or you can create empty profiles without any customizations.

Keeping track of all info included in a profile can be beneficial. For example, when you start working on a new machine, you're immediately productive if your usual key bindings, snippets, and more are instantly available. You don't need to spend time re-creating them on the new machine.

Creating and managing profiles

To create a profile, you can use the Create Profile command on the File > Preferences > Profiles menu. Or you can access the Profiles menu by using the gear icon.

Screenshot of the menu command to create a profile in Visual Studio Code.

After you create a profile, you can configure it by modifying settings, installing or uninstalling extensions, and adjusting the UI layout to suit your preferences. You can even change the icon for the profile to clarify which profile is active.

Screenshot of a custom profile icon in Visual Studio code.

These changes are stored within the active profile, so the customizations are retained whenever you activate the profile.

Switching between profiles

You can use the Profiles command in the Command Palette, the dropdown menu accessible through the Manage gear icon, or File > Preferences > Profiles. Additionally, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch between profiles. This feature can be valuable if you need different profile settings for different projects.

Let's say that for a Vue.js project, you need certain key bindings, snippets, and even tasks. But for working on a Node.js back end, you need different profile settings.

Screenshot of the Profiles menu command in Visual Studio Code.

To effectively manage profiles in VS Code, it's important to follow best practices and useful tips:

  • Experiment with configurations: Profiles offer an opportunity to experiment with settings, extensions, and UI layouts. Don't be afraid to try new configurations and workflows to find the setup that best suits your needs.
  • Organize profiles: Use meaningful names for profiles and group them based on projects, teams, or workflows. Meaningful names and groupings help in quickly identifying and activating the profile that you want.
  • Collaborate with teams: Share profiles with team members to help ensure consistent configurations across the team. You can share profiles by exporting them and sharing via GitHub gists or local files.

Advanced features and customizations

You can associate profiles with specific workspaces to automatically activate the corresponding profile when opening a workspace.

When you use profiles with Settings Sync, you can synchronize profiles across multiple devices. This feature helps ensure that developers have consistent configurations regardless of the machines they're working on. You'll explore Settings Sync later in this module.

In the upcoming exercise, you create, customize, and manage profiles in VS Code.