[visual-studio-code] What is a 'workspace' in Visual Studio Code?

I can't quite believe I am asking this question, but I have not been able to find a definition in the documentation. In case it isn't painfully obvious, I am (very) new to Visual Studio Code.

For example, Visual Studio Code talks about applying settings at the user level vs the workspace level.

On the one hand,

• (a) it could refer to a project directory that you have opened; or
• (b) it could refer to everything you have opened in a particular window.

The page referenced above says

"Workspace: These settings are stored inside your workspace
in a .vscode folder and only apply when the workspace is opened."

The title and subsequent question in the OP seem to boil down to:

1. What is a workspace in VS Code?
2. How do workspace settings work?

Short answer:

A workspace is a virtual collection of folders opened simultaneously in VSCode and defined in a .code-workspace file. Opening this file will open the collection of folders automatically. This is called a "multi-root" workspace.

The .code-workspace file also defines workspace settings that are used by the instance of VSCode where the workspace is opened.

When a workspace is not defined, i.e. you open a folder on its own, you can create "workspace settings" that are saved in a .vscode\settings.json file in the root of that folder structure.

In more detail:

VSCode uses the word "workspace" a little ambiguously in places. The first use to consider is in what is calls a multi-root workspace.

A multi-root workspace is a set of folders (the "roots") that are opened collectively in an instance of VSCode. There is no need for these folders to share parent folders; indeed that is the point since VSCode normally uses a single folder in the Explorer side-bar.

A multi-root workspace is defined by a .code-workspace (JSON) file which contains both the list of folders to be included in the workspace and VSCode settings.

• https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/multi-root-workspaces

Regarding those workspace settings...

When you open File > Preferences > Settings the settings editor is shown. At the very least you should see a USER SETTINGS tab. These are the VSCode settings that are universal for your user account on your local machine. In Windows these are saved in %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json.

• VS Code Settings File Locations

Individual folders (often each of the "root" folders in a workspace) might have a .vscode folder with their own settings.json file. When opened individually, i.e. not as part of a workspace, the content of these settings.json files is presented under the WORKSPACE SETTINGS tab, and ALL the settings in that file are used by the running VSCode instance.

When opening a multi-root workspace things behave differently. Firstly, the WORKSPACE SETTINGS tab shows the options set in the .code-workspace file. Secondly, any folder with a settings.json file will appear under a new FOLDER SETTINGS tab. Be aware that, when in a multi-root workspace, only a limited number of settings from each folder's settings.json are used. I suggest you open the link above to read further.

A workspace is just a text file with a (.code-workspace) extension. You can look at it by opening it with a text editor. I too was frustrated by the idea of a workspace and how it is implemented in Visual Studio Code. I found a method that suits me.

Start with a single "project" folder.

Open Visual Studio Code and close any open workspaces or files or folders. You should see only "OPEN EDITORS" and "NO FOLDER OPENED" in the EXPLORER.

From the menu bar* → File → Open Folder.... Navigate to where you want to put your folder and right click to open a new folder. Name it whatever you want, then click on "Select Folder". It will appear in the *Visual Studio Code explorer.

Now from menu File → Save Workspace As.... Name the workspace and save it wherever you want to keep all your workspaces, (not necessarily where your project folders are). I put all mine in a folder called "Visual Studio Code workspace".

It will be saved as a (.code-workspace) file and is just an index to all the files and folders it contains (or points to) wherever they may be on your hard drive. You can look at it by opening it with a text editor. Close the folder you created and close Visual Studio Code.

Now find your workspace "file" and double click on it. This will open Visual Studio Code with the folder you created in your workspace. Or you can open Visual Studio Code and use "Open Workspace".

Any folders you create from within your Visual Studio Code workspace will be inside your first folder. If you want to add any more top level folders, create them first wherever you want them and then use "Add To Workspace.." from Visual Studio Code.

Although the question is asking "what is a workspace?", I feel that the source of confusion is the expectation that workspaces should behave more like "projects" in other editors.

So, I to help all the people landing here because of this confusion, I wanted to post the following plugin for VS Code (not mine), "Project Manager": https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=alefragnani.project-manager

It has a nice UI for managing (saving and opening) single-folder projects:

Save Projects:

Open projects with the palette:

See the current project in the status bar (click to open project palette):

Access projects in the sidebar:

You can save settings at the workspace level and you can open multiple folders in a workspace. If you want to do either of those things, use a workspace, otherwise, just open a folder.

A Visual Studio Code workspace is a list of a project's folders and files. A workspace can contain multiple folders. You can customize the settings and preferences of a workspace.

1. Open file menu and select Save Workspace As, that will save current explorer status.
2. After that you can chose file->Open Workspace to open before saved workspace.

Workspace, in my opinion, something that everyone forgot to mention, it’s a way to create an area with all tools you need to address a single language, like other said, in one project you might have PHP, Phyton, JavaScript, Node, etc.

Creating a Workspace for each specific language you can have all tools for managing, debugging, testing, for example all your JavaScript.

This is much easier to manage, so you can have a workspace for PHP, another for Node, ... and one project that have folders in multiple workspaces.

Hope I have helped!

As of May 2018, it seems that a workspace in Visual Studio Code allows you to have quick access to different but related projects. All without having to open a different folder.

And you can have multiple workspaces too. See references here and you will get the full picture of it:

Reference 1
Reference 2

On some investigation, the answer appears to be (a).

When I go to change the settings, the settings file goes into a .vscode directory in my project directory.

I just installed Visual Studio Code v1.25.1. on a Windows 7 Professional SP1 machine. I wanted to understand workspaces in detail, so I spent a few hours figuring out how they work in this version of Visual Studio Code. I thought the results of my research might be of interest to the community.

First, workspaces are referred to by Microsoft in the Visual Studio Code documentation as "multi-root workspaces." In plain English that means "a multi-folder (A.K.A "root") work environment." A Visual Studio Code workspace is simply a collection of folders - any collection you desire, in any order you wish. The typical collection of folders constitutes a software development project. However, a folder collection could be used for anything else for which software code is being developed.

The mechanics behind how Visual Studio Code handles workspaces is a bit complicated. I think the quickest way to convey what I learned is by giving you a set of instructions that you can use to see how workspaces work on your computer. I am assuming that you are starting with a fresh install of Visual Studio Code v1.25.1. If you are using a production version of Visual Studio Code I don't recommend that you follow my instructions because you may lose some or all of your existing Visual Studio Code configuration! If you already have a test version of Visual Studio Code v1.25.1 installed, **and you are willing to lose any configuration that already exists, the following must be done to revert your Visual Studio Code to a fresh installation state:

Delete the following folder (if it exists):

  C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Code\Workspaces (where "%username%" is the name of the currently logged-on user)

You will be adding folders to Visual Studio Code to create a new workspace. If any of the folders you intend to use to create this new workspace have previously been used with Visual Studio Code, please delete the ".vscode" subfolder (if it exists) within each of the folders that will be used to create the new workspace.

Launch Visual Studio Code. If the Welcome page is displayed, close it. Do the same for the Panel (a horizontal pane) if it is displayed. If you received a message that Git isn't installed click "Remind me later." If displayed, also close the "Untitled" code page that was launched as the default code page. If the Explorer pane is not displayed click "View" on the main menu then click "Explorer" to display the Explorer pane. Inside the Explorer pane you should see three (3) View headers - Open Editors, No Folder Opened, and Outline (located at the very bottom of the Explorer pane). Make sure that, at a minimum, the open editors and no folder opened view headers are displayed.

Visual Studio Code displays a button that reads "Open Folder." Click this button and select a folder of your choice. Visual Studio Code will refresh and the name of your selected folder will have replaced the "No Folder Opened" View name. Any folders and files that exist within your selected folder will be displayed beneath the View name.

Now open the Visual Studio Code Preferences Settings file. There are many ways to do this. I'll use the easiest to remember which is menu File → Preferences → Settings. The Settings file is displayed in two columns. The left column is a read-only listing of the default values for every Visual Studio Code feature. The right column is used to list the three (3) types of user settings. At this point in your test only two user settings will be listed - User Settings and Workspace Settings. The User Settings is displayed by default. This displays the contents of your User Settings .json file. To find out where this file is located, simply hover your mouse over the "User Settings" listing that appears under the OPEN EDITORS View in Explorer. This listing in the OPEN EDITORS View is automatically selected when the "User Settings" option in the right column is selected. The path should be:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json

This settings.json file is where the User Settings for Visual Studio Code are stored.

Now click the Workspace Settings option in the right column of the Preferences listing. When you do this, a subfolder named ".vscode" is automatically created in the folder you added to Explore a few steps ago. Look at the listing of your folder in Explorer to confirm that the .vscode subfolder has been added. Inside the new .vscode subfolder is another settings.json file. This file contains the workspace settings for the folder you added to Explorer a few steps ago.

At this point you have a single folder whose User Settings are stored at:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json

and whose Workspace Settings are stored at:

C:\TheLocationOfYourFolder\settings.json

This is the configuration when a single folder is added to a new installation of Visual Studio Code. Things get messy when we add a second (or greater) folder. That's because we are changing Visual Studio Code's User Settings and Workspace Settings to accommodate multiple folders. In a single-folder environment only two settings.json files are needed as listed above. But in a multi-folder environment a .vscode subfolder is created in each folder added to Explorer and a new file, "workspaces.json," is created to manage the multi-folder environment. The new "workspaces.json" file is created at:

c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Code\Workspaces\%workspace_id%\workspaces.json

The "%workspaces_id%" is a folder with a unique all-number name.

In the Preferences right column there now appears three user setting options - User Settings, Workspace Settings, and Folder Settings. The function of User Settings remains the same as for a single-folder environment. However, the settings file behind the Workspace Settings has been changed from the settings.json file in the single folder's .vscode subfolder to the workspaces.json file located at the workspaces.json file path shown above. The settings.json file located in each folder's .vscode subfolder is now controlled by a third user setting, Folder Options. This is a drop-down selection list that allows for the management of each folder's settings.json file located in each folder's .vscode subfolder. Please note: the .vscode subfolder will not be created in newly-added explorer folders until the newly-added folder has been selected at least once in the folder options user setting.

Notice that the Explorer single folder name has bee changed to "UNTITLED (WORKSPACE)." This indicates the following:

1. A multi-folder workspace has been created with the name "UNTITLED (WORKSPACE)
2. The workspace is named "UNTITLED (WORKSPACE)" to communicate that the workspace has not yet been saved as a separate, unique, workspace file
3. The UNTITLED (WORKSPACE) workspace can have folders added to it and removed from it but it will function as the ONLY workspace environment for Visual Studio Code

The full functionality of Visual Studio Code workspaces is only realized when a workspace is saved as a file that can be reloaded as needed. This provides the capability to create unique multi-folder workspaces (e.g., projects) and save them as files for later use! To do this select menu File → Save Workspace As from the main menu and save the current workspace configuration as a unique workspace file. If you need to create a workspace "from scratch," first save your current workspace configuration (if needed) then right-click each Explorer folder name and click "Remove Folder from Workspace." When all folders have been removed from the workspace, add the folders you require for your new workspace. When you finish adding new folders, simply save the new workspace as a new workspace file.

An important note - Visual Studio Code doesn't "revert" to single-folder mode when only one folder remains in Explorer or when all folders have been removed from Explorer when creating a new workspace "from scratch." The multi-folder workspace configuration that utilizes three user preferences remains in effect. This means that unless you follow the instructions at the beginning of this post, Visual Studio Code can never be returned to a single-folder mode of operation - it will always remain in multi-folder workspace mode.

So, yet again the lesson of not polluting the source tree of a project with artifacts that aren't directly related to that project is being ignored.

There is zero reason for a Visual Studio Code workspace file (workspaces.json) or directory (.vscode) or whatever to be placed in the source tree. It could just as easily have been placed under your user settings.

I thought we figured this out about 20+ years ago, but it seems that some lessons are doomed to be repeated.

If the Visual Studio Code is a fresh installation;

1. Click on extensions, Search for "python" and click on install

2. Click on view -> explorer If there in no folder added a folder to the Workspace (File->Add folder to Workspace)

3. If you want to use a virtual python environment, Click on File -> Preference -> settings

Click on "{} open settings JSON" which is in top right corner of the window, then add the path to python.exe file which is in the virtual environment

{
    "python.pythonPath": "C:\\PathTo\\VirtualENV\\python.exe"
}

4. Start a new terminal and check the correct python interpreter is selected

Do you ever have to built a new directory and open a new Visual Studio Code window for a test project or for a feature that you want to add to your main project? Ok, so you need a workspace and enough CPU high usage...

I just wanted to mention a common usage of workspaces in Visual Studio Code in addition to all other answers.

The main utility of a workspace (and maybe the only one) is to allow to add multiple independent folders that compounds a project. For example:

- WorkspaceProjectX  
-- ApiFolder   (maybe /usr/share/www/api)  
-- DocsFolder  (maybe /home/user/projx/html/docs)  
-- WebFolder   (maybe /usr/share/www/web)

So you can group those in a work space for a specific project instead of have to open multiple folders windows.

You can learn more here.

They call it a multi-root workspace, and with that you can do debugging easily because:

"With multi-root workspaces, Visual Studio Code searches across all folders for launch.json debug configuration files and displays them with the folder name as a suffix."

Say you have a server and a client folder inside your application folder. If you want to debug them together, without a workspace you have to start two Visual Studio Code instances, one for server, one for client and you need to switch back and forth.

But right now (1.24) you can't add a single file to a workspace, only folders, which is a little bit inconvenient.

Just added in February 2021 is this documentation on "What is a VS Code 'workspace'": workspaces.

A Visual Studio Code "workspace" is the collection of one or more folders that are opened in a VS Code window (instance). In most cases, you will have a single folder opened as the workspace but, depending on your development workflow, you can include more than one folder, using an advanced configuration called Multi-root workspaces.

The concept of a workspace enables VS Code to:

Configure settings that only apply to a specific folder or folders but not others. Persist task and debugger launch configurations that are only valid in the context of that workspace. Store and restore UI state associated with that workspace (for example, the files that are opened). Selectively enable or disable extensions only for that workspace. You may see the terms "folder" and "workspace" used interchangeably in VS Code documentation, issues, and community discussions. Think of a workspace as the root of a project that has extra VS Code knowledge and capabilities.

• Note: It is also possible to open VS Code without a workspace. For example, when you open a new VS Code window by selecting a file from your platform's File menu, you will not be inside a workspace. In this mode, some of VS Code's capabilities are reduced but you can still open text files and edit them.

Single-folder workspaces

You don't have to do anything for a folder to become a VS Code workspace other than open the folder with VS Code. Once a folder has been opened, VS Code will automatically keep track of things such as your open files and editor layout so the editor will be as you left it when you reopen that folder. You can also add other folder-specific configurations such as workspace-specific settings (versus global user settings) and task definition and debugging launch files (see below in the workspace settings section).

Multi-root workspaces

Multi-root workspaces are an advanced capability of VS Code that allow you to configure multiple distinct folders to be part of the workspace. Instead of opening a folder as workspace, you will open a .code-workspace JSON file that lists the folders of the workspace. For example:

{
  "folders": [
    {
      "path": "my-folder-a"
    },
    {
      "path": "my-folder-b"
    }
  ]
}

A multi-root workspace opened in VS Code

• Note: The visual difference of having a folder opened versus opening a .code-workspace file can be subtle. To give you a hint that a .code-workspace file has been opened, some areas of the user interface (for example, the root of the File Explorer) show an extra (Workspace) suffix next to the name.

And much more at the first link.