Reset default VS Code profile to defaults

Question

Now that Visual Studio Code has profiles, I'd like to reset my (bloated) Default profile back to "factory defaults", and define specific profiles for Erlang, C++, Java, Flutter, etc.

How do I clear out my default profile? I've looked for it on disk, but only custom profiles appear here.

Answer 1

This is the nuclear option, so back up first

First, quit VS Code.

Delete ALL Settings

Per the documentation for User and Workspace Settings, your settings are stored at:

• Windows %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json
• macOS $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json
• Linux $HOME/.config/Code/User/settings.json

Go to the parent of the Code directory in the above (e.g. on Mac):

cd $HOME/Library/Application\ Support

Move the Code directory somewhere safe:

mv Code Code.backup

Delete Extensions

The above won't delete the extensions. To do that:

code --list-extensions | xargs -n1 code --uninstall-extension

On Powershell, that's:

code --list-extensions | % { code --uninstall-extension $_ }

You might need to run this a few times: it doesn't take dependencies into consideration, so it didn't uninstall the Dart extension the first time.

I'm also not sure how it plays with WSL-installed extensions.

Restart VS Code

Restart VS Code. It should be pristine.