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Visual Studio Code always seems to remember my session and reopen the files and/or projects that were open the last time I used it. It obviously behaves correctly when running it from the command line with a file or folder supplied, but when opening from a taskbar shortcut, I'd like it to default to an empty environment.

Is there any way to change this behavior?

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  • 27
    How?? My VSCode never remembers previous sessions. It always opens with a brand new Untitled-1 tab. It drives me nuts Commented Nov 20, 2016 at 15:06
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    @Green Currently it only remembers previous files if you have a folder/workspace opened. So just open any random folder (i chose my desktop folder) and now it remembers any file between sessions, even those not from that folder. Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 10:50
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    A big fat +1 from me because this question actually revealed to be that VS code CAN RESTORE previous session. XD Also in terms of what @Cardin states things have changed. I have the latest VS code running on Win10 and setting "window.reopenFolders" : "all" opens every single file no matter if it is in the currently active directory or not. Sadly it seems that VS code still doesn't support having multiple active directories because of all that "active directory = workspace". Commented Apr 26, 2017 at 7:21
  • @rbaleksandar That's still a negative. VS Code does not reopen existing non-dirty files as of ver 1.11.2, even with "window.reopenFolders" : "all". To test, 1) go to File>Close Folder, 2) drag and drop any random file into VS Code, 3) go to File>Exit, 4) Relaunch VS Code, 5) Notice you get a blank VS Code editor again. In order to restore sessions, you need to have an active directory open. Any session, regardless of file location, will be remembered as long as you have an active directory. Btw, you can install Project Manager extension to jump between multiple active directories. Commented Apr 27, 2017 at 8:17
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    Be aware, you can lose work with this feature, at least in v1.19.3. Commented Feb 1, 2018 at 5:58

12 Answers 12

Reset to default
338

You can also go into your settings and use the following:

"window.reopenFolders": "none"

which will not reopen the folders you were working on when you closed the editor. The other options are one (the default) and all.

Edit 2017-11-09:

The option is now changed in latest versions.

"window.restoreWindows": "none"

See Mathieu DOMER's answer.

Edit 2018-09-12:

Another setting related to this is the hotExit setting. This has been discussed in this answer to a related question. To prevent reopening and remembering unsaved files, you can set this to:

"files.hotExit": "off"

But from the test I've made, when the window.restoreWindows setting is set to none, this is not needed. I haven't tested every possible combination, so YMMV.

And to answer a question in the comments, to edit the settings, you have to open the settings file. Some documentation can be found here (at least on the date I am writing this).

Edit 2022-03-16:

If you prefer using a GUI to change the settings, see D'Arcy Rittich's answer.

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19 Comments

I'm changing the accepted answer to this one, as I feel like the settings approach is better than a command line switch, which only affects the one shortcut.
Folders? I don't use folders. How about just files?
I don't have window.reopenFolders as a setting option. Instead I have window.restoreWindows
A thing that might annoy some: VS Code will still restore the workspace if it contained a tab with an unsaved file.
This isn't working for me when I open a folder with code . command. Always restores open editors and I can't stand it
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In VS Code:

  • for Windows/Linux Ctrl+, (or choose File/Preferences/Settings) to open the settings page.
  • for Mac ⌘+, (or choose Code -> Preferences -> Settings) to open the settings page.

then type restoreWindows in the Search settings input to filter for this setting. Set it to none and restart VS Code.

restoreWindows

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49

With latest update, it seems that the parameter has changed, now use:

"window.restoreWindows": "none"
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22

You can add the -n option to the startup of VS Code and it will always start with an empty window, not restoring your previous session.

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3 Comments

The option is definitively there (code --help displays -n, --new-window Force to open a new window.) but it still reopens all previous windows. I think it's only meant to do something meaningful when the program is already running.
where is the startup? I cannot find where to add the -n. Is it a file? Can I access it via Settings?
Only this worked for me on MacOs: "code -n ~/myFolder/myCodeFolder"
7

Go to File -> Preferences -> Settings

In the "Search Settings" bar type Restore Windows. You will see Window:Restore Windows. Set it to none.

Or...

On the side menu, User should be underlined and you should see options like:

  • Text Editor
  • Workbench
  • Window
  • Features
  • Applications
  • Security
  • Extensions

Click on Window and scroll down on the main page until you see Restore Windows. Put the setting to none.

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1 Comment

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5

To prevent opening any previously opened workspace when starting VS Code without a resource (file/directory/code-workspace) argument, put "window.restoreWindows": "none", in settings.json.

To handle editor tabs for untitled (new, unsaved) files, put "files.hotExit": "off", in settings.json. See also How can I get VS Code to not remember unsaved changes when I exit it?.

From my basic testing, the two above measures don't prevent VS Code from recalling open editors and editor groups when reopening a previously opened workspace. There's at least one trick that I know of to work around this. You can put the following task in a workspace tasks.json file to make VS Code close all editor groups for that workspace on startup, or put it in your user-level tasks (run Tasks: Open User Tasks) file to make it run on open for all workspaces:

{ "label": "close editor groups", "command": "${command:workbench.action.closeAllGroups}", "runOptions": { "runOn": "folderOpen", }, "presentation": { "echo": false, "reveal": "never", "focus": false, "panel": "shared", "showReuseMessage": false, "clear": false, }, },

If you want to run that command manually instead of automatically, then just run View: Close All Editor Groups in the command palette.

For other stuff, see settings like terminal.integrated.hideOnStartup, workbench.editor.restoreViewState, or related commands that you can do something similar with the above folderOpen task.

There are feature requests about this:

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2

01 December 2018

This works for me. i.e. "C:\Users\Sampath\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe" -n

enter image description here

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2

For me, none of above is working while I'm trying to close "dirty" unsaved files which I accidentally edited 1000 files and wanted to ignore saving all of them.

My fix was adding this line into settings.json:

 "files.hotExit": "off"

Open up vscode, close vscode and just click the confirmation button to close all of the files without saving.

Then open back vscode and boom.. no more unsaved files being shown.

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2 Comments

Where did you find settings.json?
@CB_Ron you can find your settings.json file here: code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/…
0

If "window.restoreWindows": "none" not solve the problem,
then try to run code as root -> sudo code --user-data-dir code files and restart code normally without root.

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0

Below worked for me

Right-click on Shortcut and add --disable-gpu to Target as per screen shot.

enter image description here

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1 Comment

This works for me in both regular vs code and vs code insiders
0

To stop it remembering open tabs (MacOS):

$ rm ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/* # chown root ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage
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2 Comments

Doesn't delete other things aside from just the previously opened tabs/files?
@GinoMempin I have not noticed any issues and I have used this for some time
-2

I met with this problem today and for me it worked just dragging folder to VS Code. :D

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