Anurag is an experienced journalist and author who’s been covering tech for the past 5 years, with a focus on Windows, Android, and Apple. He’s written for sites like Android Police, Neowin, Dexerto, and MakeTechEasier. Anurag’s always pumped about tech and loves getting his hands on the latest gadgets. When he's not procrastinating, you’ll probably find him catching the newest movies in theaters or scrolling through Twitter from his bed.
I've been using VS Code for almost a decade, and there's still plenty in the editor I haven't explored properly. I focus on the tools I need for whatever I'm working on, and features that aren't immediately useful are easy to overlook. VS Code has so many features and extensions that you can spend years using it without getting around to some fairly useful additions.
Profiles is one of those features. It lets you keep different sets of extensions, settings, and visual customizations for different projects. If you use the same editor for Python, Java, and web development, you don't have to keep the same configuration for all three. You can give each its own setup, and getting started takes very little effort.
Setting up profiles takes only a few minutes
You don't have to start from scratch
To set up a profile, click the Manage gear in the bottom-left corner of VS Code and open Profiles. Select New Profile, name it, and choose what you want to include. You can copy an existing profile, use a built-in template, or start with an empty profile if you want to configure everything yourself.
The templates are useful if you're unsure what to include. VS Code provides options for Python, Node.js, and Java, among others, with relevant extensions and settings already selected. These are predefined starting points, so you don't need to install language extensions first. You can review and adjust the contents before creating the profile.
Once your profile is active, open Settings and make your changes as usual. There's no separate configuration process to learn, and you can return to tweak things whenever you want.
VS Code also remembers the profile associated with a folder or workspace. Select the appropriate profile with your project open, and it will be used when you return to that folder. Opening an individual Python or Java file doesn't automatically switch profiles, which is worth understanding before you set up one for each language.
Each project gets its own set of extensions
Give each project the tools it needs
Extensions are a good reason to use profiles, especially if you work across several languages. A Java project and a Python project need different tools, and keeping everything together makes your extension list harder to manage. Profiles let you choose which extensions belong in each setup without repeatedly changing your configuration when you switch between projects.
For example, your Python profile can contain the tools you use for Python development, and your web development profile can have the extensions you need for JavaScript. You can also keep a general-purpose extension available everywhere through Apply Extension to all Profiles. There's no need to maintain a separate copy of your preferred setup manually in every profile.
You don't have to organize everything by language, either. Two projects written in the same language can use different tools or require different settings. One project's extension requirements shouldn't dictate how you configure the editor for everything else you work on.
If you only use a handful of extensions, this probably won't be your main reason to create profiles. But once you have several projects with different requirements, having a defined set of tools for each is useful. You can look through a profile's extensions and know which project they belong to, instead of wondering why you installed them months ago.
Different themes make projects easier to identify
Different themes make projects easier to identify
The visual customization is probably the most immediately noticeable part of using profiles. You can give different projects their own themes and layouts, so a Java project looks different from a Python project as soon as you open it. If you regularly have several VS Code windows open, that's a useful way to tell them apart without reading each window's title.
A straightforward setup is to create profiles for Node.js, Python, and Java, then assign a different theme to each. You can still choose themes you actually like using. The point is to make the windows distinguishable, so there's no reason to put up with a color scheme you dislike just because it's different.
You can take the same approach with two projects written in the same language. The language indicator in the bottom-right corner tells you what kind of file you're editing, but it doesn't distinguish one Java project from another. Separate themes make that distinction much more obvious.
Profiles also let you change more than colors. You can adjust the editor layout, hide views you don't need, and change settings like the font. You don't have to customize every detail, either. A different theme and a few layout changes are enough to make each project feel like its own workspace.
All in all, profiles are pretty nice
I haven't used them for too long, but Profiles is a really nice feature of VS Code. It's a useful and a fun way to tweak the visuals of your IDE. I will definitely keep looking for other tweaks in VS Code to make the most out of the editor.