Centrally manage VS Code settings with policies

Enterprise policies in Visual Studio Code enable organizations to centrally manage VS Code settings for their development teams to ensure consistency and compatibility across their organization. When a policy value is set, the value overrides the VS Code setting value configured at any level (default, user, and workspace).

IT admins can deploy and enforce specific VS Code configurations on users' devices through different device management solutions. VS Code supports applying policies on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

In this article, you learn which enterprise policies are available in VS Code and how to configure them on different operating systems.

Windows group policies

VS Code has support for Windows Registry-based Group Policy.

These profiles can be deployed using Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions or installed manually on individual devices.

Step 1: Obtain the sample ADMX and ADML files

Starting from VS Code version 1.69, each release ships with a policies directory containing ADMX template files that define the available policies.

You can get the ADMX and ADML files from either an existing installation or by downloading and extracting the VS Code zip archive. Follow these steps to obtain the files:

1. Download the VS Code zip archive for your version of VS Code.
2. Extract the zip file to a temporary location.
3. Navigate to the policies folder in the extracted files. This folder contains the ADMX template files (for example, vscode.admx) and a locales subfolder with ADML files for different languages.

Step 2: Configure policy values

Edit the policy values according to your requirements:

String policies - policies that accept text values or JSON strings:

<!-- Example: Allow extensions from specific publishers -->
<key>AllowedExtensions</key>
<string>{"microsoft": true, "github": true}</string>

<!-- Example: Set update mode to a specific value -->
<key>UpdateMode</key>
<string>start</string>

Boolean policies - policies that accept true/false values:

<!-- Example: Enable user feedback -->
<key>EnableFeedback</key>
<true/>

<!-- Example: Disable telemetry -->
<key>EnableTelemetry</key>
<false/>

Remove unwanted policies - delete both the key and value for any policy you don't want to enforce:

<!-- To not enforce an update mode policy, remove these lines: -->
<key>UpdateMode</key>
<string>start</string>

Refer to the policy reference below for details on each policy's accepted values and behavior.

Step 3: Deploy the policies

You can now deploy the configured policies at scale to all relevant devices in your organization using a device management solution. You can manually test the policies on a local Windows machine before deploying them at scale using the Local Group Policy Editor.

macOS configuration profiles

Configuration profiles manage settings on macOS devices. A profile is an XML file (.mobileconfig) with key/value pairs that correspond to available policies.

These profiles can be deployed using Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions or installed manually on individual devices.

Step 1: Obtain the sample configuration profile

Starting from VS Code version 1.99, each release ships with a sample .mobileconfig file. Follow these steps to locate the sample file on a macOS device with VS Code installed:

1. Open Finder and navigate to /Applications.
2. Right-click on Visual Studio Code.app (or your VS Code variant) and select Show Package Contents.
3. Navigate to Contents/Resources/app/policies.
4. Locate the sample .mobileconfig file (for example, vscode-sample.mobileconfig).

Step 2: Configure policy values

1. Copy the sample .mobileconfig file to a working location (for example, your Desktop or Documents folder).

2. Open the copied file in a text editor (for example, TextEdit, VS Code, or any XML editor).

3. Edit the policy values according to your requirements:

   String policies - policies that accept text values or JSON strings:

   <!-- Example: Allow extensions from specific publishers -->
   <key>AllowedExtensions</key>
   <string>{"microsoft": true, "github": true}</string>
   
   <!-- Example: Set update mode to a specific value -->
   <key>UpdateMode</key>
   <string>start</string>
   

   Important

   If there's a syntax error in the policy value, the setting will not be applied. You can check the Window log in VS Code for errors (press ⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P) and enter Show Window Log).

   Boolean policies - policies that accept true/false values:

   <!-- Example: Enable user feedback -->
   <key>EnableFeedback</key>
   <true/>
   
   <!-- Example: Disable telemetry -->
   <key>EnableTelemetry</key>
   <false/>
   

   Remove unwanted policies - delete both the key and value for any policy you don't want to enforce:

   <!-- To not enforce an update mode policy, remove these lines: -->
   <key>UpdateMode</key>
   <string>start</string>
   

Refer to the policy reference for details on each policy's accepted values and behavior.

Step 3: Deploy the policies

You can now deploy the configured policies at scale to all relevant devices in your organization with an MDM solution. You can manually test the policies on a local machine before deploying them at scale.

Linux JSON policies

Starting from VS Code version 1.106, you can configure VS Code setting policies on Linux devices by placing a JSON policy file at /etc/vscode/policy.json. This approach uses a simple JSON format to define policy values.

These profiles can be deployed using Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions or installed manually on individual devices.

Step 1: Obtain the sample policy file

Starting from VS Code version 1.106, each release ships with a sample .policy.json file. You can obtain it from either an existing installation or by downloading and extracting the VS Code archive. The file is located in the resources/app/policies directory.

Step 2: Configure policy values

1. Copy the sample policy.json file to a working location:

   sudo cp /usr/share/code/resources/app/policies/policy.json /tmp/policy.json
   

2. Edit the file using your preferred text editor:

   sudo nano /tmp/policy.json
   # or
   sudo vim /tmp/policy.json
   # or
   code /tmp/policy.json
   

3. Edit the policy values according to your requirements:

   String policies - policies that accept text values or JSON strings:

   <!-- Example: Allow extensions from specific publishers -->
   <key>AllowedExtensions</key>
   <string>{"microsoft": true, "github": true}</string>
   
   <!-- Example: Set update mode to a specific value -->
   <key>UpdateMode</key>
   <string>start</string>
   

   Important

   If there's a syntax error in the policy value, the setting will not be applied. You can check the Window log in VS Code for errors (press ⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P) and enter Show Window Log).

   Boolean policies - policies that accept true/false values:

   <!-- Example: Enable user feedback -->
   <key>EnableFeedback</key>
   <true/>
   
   <!-- Example: Disable telemetry -->
   <key>EnableTelemetry</key>
   <false/>
   

   Remove unwanted policies - delete both the key and value for any policy you don't want to enforce:

   <!-- To not enforce an update mode policy, remove these lines: -->
   <key>UpdateMode</key>
   <string>start</string>
   

Refer to the policy reference for details on each policy's accepted values and behavior.

Step 3: Deploy the policies

You can now deploy the configured policies at scale to all relevant devices in your organization with an MDM solution. You can manually test the policies on a local machine before deploying them at scale.

VS Code enterprise policy reference

The following table lists all available enterprise policies in VS Code.