JavaScript in Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code includes built-in JavaScript IntelliSense, debugging, formatting, code navigation, refactorings, and many other advanced language features.

Working with JavaScript in Visual Studio Code

Most of these features just work out of the box, while some may require basic configuration to get the best experience. This page summarizes the JavaScript features that VS Code ships with. Extensions from the VS Code Marketplace can augment or change most of these built-in features. For a more in-depth guide on how these features work and can be configured, see Working with JavaScript.

IntelliSense

IntelliSense shows you intelligent code completion, hover information, and signature information so that you can write code more quickly and correctly.

VS Code provides IntelliSense within your JavaScript projects; for many npm libraries such as React, lodash, and express; and for other platforms such as node, serverless, or IoT.

See Working with JavaScript for information about VS Code's JavaScript IntelliSense, how to configure it, and help troubleshooting common IntelliSense problems.

JavaScript projects (jsconfig.json)

A jsconfig.json file defines a JavaScript project in VS Code. While jsconfig.json files are not required, you will want to create one in cases such as:

  • If not all JavaScript files in your workspace should be considered part of a single JavaScript project. jsconfig.json files let you exclude some files from showing up in IntelliSense.
  • To ensure that a subset of JavaScript files in your workspace is treated as a single project. This is useful if you are working with legacy code that uses implicit globals dependencies instead of imports for dependencies.
  • If your workspace contains more than one project context, such as front-end and back-end JavaScript code. For multi-project workspaces, create a jsconfig.json at the root folder of each project.
  • You are using the TypeScript compiler to down-level compile JavaScript source code.

To define a basic JavaScript project, add a jsconfig.json at the root of your workspace:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "module": "CommonJS",
    "target": "ES6"
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

See Working with JavaScript for more advanced jsconfig.json configuration.

Tip: To check if a JavaScript file is part of JavaScript project, just open the file in VS Code and run the JavaScript: Go to Project Configuration command. This command opens the jsconfig.json that references the JavaScript file. A notification is shown if the file is not part of any jsconfig.json project.

Snippets

VS Code includes basic JavaScript snippets that are suggested as you type;

There are many extensions that provide additional snippets, including snippets for popular frameworks such as Redux or Angular. You can even define your own snippets.

Tip: To disable snippets suggestions, set editor.snippetSuggestions to "none" in your