How to Factory Reset Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a code editor with numerous plugins and extensions support to customize the settings. However, the performance of VS Code can become slow over time. Extensions can become corrupt, and specific settings changed, which you don’t remember how to revert.

In these cases, you may want to start from a clean slate by restoring every setting of VS code to default. Resetting VS Code will also clean the configurations that you may have added.

Note: Make sure to backup your current settings configurations by making a backup of the settings.json file before the factory reset.

To reset VS Code using VS Code Settings, follow these steps:

  1. Select the gear icon from the “Activity Bar” and click on Settings.

    Settings
    Click on the gear icon in the bottom-left corner and select the Settings option.

  2. Click on the sheet icon in the top-right corner.

    Open Settings(JSON)
    Click on the sheet icon.

  3. You should see the settings.json file opened. We recommend you copy-paste the code found here in a notepad file to keep a backup of your previous settings.

    settings.json
    Settings.json file.

  4. Delete the code inside the curly braces and save the file by pressing Ctrl + S.

    Cleared JSON File
    Clear the code inside the curly braces.

  5. When prompted with a message to restart VS Code, select the Restart button.
    Restart
    Click on the Restart button.

    Voilà! You have restored Visual Studio Code to the default settings.

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