How to Completely Uninstall Visual Studio Code IDE and Its Extensions From Windows OS

In this Instructable, We will learn how to completely remove Visual Studio Code IDE and its related files from your Windows 10 PC .

I will also teach you to disable the auto update feature of the VS Code IDE in this instructable.

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a lightweight, open-source code editor developed by Microsoft. It's designed for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. You can extend the Visual Studio Code IDE with a variety of extensions that provide support for various programming languages like C/C++,Java, Python etc, along with their corresponding debuggers and compilers.

Simply uninstalling the IDE from Windows using the

Settings -> Apps and Features -> Programs and Features

will not remove the settings ,preferences and extensions installed by your Visual Studio Code (VS Code) Installation.

Here We will teach you completely uninstall the VS code and create a new blank empty installation without your previous settings or extensions.

You will need a Visual Studio Code (VS Code) installation on your Windows PC.

You can download it from Microsoft Website.

First thing to do is to Go to Settings ->Apps-> Apps and Features -> Programs and Features

and find Visual studio code and uninstall it from your PC.

This will remove the IDE from your PC but the settings and other data will still remain on your PC. If you reinstall the IDE it would revert to the Old Settings and preferences.

In Windows, %AppData% is an environment variable that points to the Roaming folder inside the AppData directory for the currently logged-in user. This folder is used to store application-specific data that can roam with the user profile across different computers

AppData: A hidden folder in your user profile directory (C:\Users\YourUsername) that contains application-specific settings and data

It has three main subfolders:

1. Roaming: Data that can move with your profile if you're using a networked environment, like when you log in to different computers within a domain.
2. Local:
3. LocalLow:

You can open the folder directly by typing %AppData% in the File Explorer address bar

or in the Run dialog (press Win + R and type %AppData%)

This will open the folder

Inside that you can see the folder called Code which belong to the Visual Studio Code.

Delete the Code folder

Now we will delete the .vscode folder

The .vscode folder inside C:\Users\username\.vscode on Windows is slightly different from the .vscode folder inside a specific project directory.

This folder contains global settings for Visual Studio Code that apply across all projects and workspaces.

It’s also the default location for extensions installed globally on your system. When you install an extension that isn't tied to a specific project but is instead available for all projects you work on, it will be stored here.

By deleting this folder we will be clearing our system of all extensions and Global settings.

Visual Studio Code has the option to auto update every time it is started ,which can be annoying some times. Here i will tell you how to turn off the auto update feature of the Visual Studio Code IDE.

Go to File -> Preferences -> Settings through the Menu Bar.

which will bring up the Settings Tab.

On the Left side of the tab, under Applications you can see the Update option.

Click on it and uncheck the Enable Windows Background Updates Check Button .This will stop your VS code IDE from Auto updating.