How to reset settings in Visual Studio Code?

Question

I've hidden the menu bar by accident and I can't find a way to show it again. How do I restore the default settings in Visual Studio Code?

Here I found a detailed description of settings file. As it states, it should be located at %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json, but in my case it's not there.

Related (more extreme): How do I factory reset Visual Studio Code? — wjandrea
– wjandrea, Commented Mar 7 at 1:12

Daniel Imms · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-05 12:21:18Z

You can get your menu back by pressing/holding alt, you can then toggle the menu back on via the View menu.

As for your settings, you can open your user settings through the command palette:

Press F1
Type user settings
Press enter
Click the "sheet" icon to open the settings.json file:

From there you can delete the file's contents and save to reset your settings.

For a more manual route, the settings files are located in the following locations:

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

Extensions are located in the following locations:

Windows %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions
macOS ~/.vscode/extensions
Linux ~/.vscode/extensions

Thank you Daniel. I'm a little bit surprised that toggling menu bar visibility isn't saved in settings file, but as far as I understand deleting content of user settings should bring default settings, so this is it. Thanks again.
removing contents of settings,json worked like a charm thanks for the solution
For step '4.' you could also type @modified in the top-bar and press Enter - will show you just the modified settings. From there you can click each, click the cog ("Manage") and choose Reset.
As of version 1.41.1 on macOS, the key bindings are now in keybindings.json under the same directory as settings.json. To restore the default key bindings, just remove changes in keybindings.json.
Thanks. It's a good way to see the fully JSON settings file that we changed so that we can revert the stuff strange or redundant

Gama11 · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-13 19:51:40Z

147

If you want to reset everything, go to %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Code and delete the whole folder after you uninstall the VS code, then install it again.

Also in %userprofile%\.vscode delete extensions folder in case you want to delete all extensions.

edited Mar 13, 2019 at 19:51

Gama11

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answered Mar 12, 2018 at 19:58

Joe

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4 Comments

RayLoveless Over a year ago

Just deleting the code folder did the trick for me. Thanks for actually answering the question.

muasif80 Over a year ago

This answer helped me. I am not sure why the key y stopped working in my editor. Disabled all the extensions but it did not work.

Ian Smith Over a year ago

Deleting the "Code" folder in AppData Roaming fixed it for me on Windows. Cleaning out my VS Code settings.json didn't help either. I don't know why the Selected Answer is "hold Alt", that does absolutely nothing.

Miguel Gargallo Over a year ago

Thanks, this worked for, no need to restart, this answer helped me

offby1 · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-25 19:43:45Z

This may be overkill, but it seemed to work for me (on a Mac):

#!/bin/sh rm -rfv "$HOME/.vscode" rm -rfv "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Code" rm -rfv "$HOME/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.VSCode" rm -rfv "$HOME/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.VSCode.savedState"

After I ran that, and restarted VSC, it showed the the "Welcome" screen, which I took to mean that it was starting from scratch.

Good point, @Pynchia. In a perfect world, you'd do git clean -dxf, but that's a very sharp knife :-)
Had Go To Definition and Peek Definition not working and this finally fixed it. Thanks.

Rajkaran Mishra · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-02 16:43:35Z

If you want to start afresh, deleting the settings.json file from your user's profile will do the trick.

But if you don't want to reset everything, it is still possible through settings menu.

You can search for the setting that you want to revert back using search box.

You will see some settings with the left blue line, it means you've modified that one.

If you take your cursor to that setting, a gear button will appear. You can click this to restore that setting.

You can also use the drop-down below that setting and change it to default.

This has to be the best answer if you are looking to get certain things back. The blue line was key into finding things I've changed.
If you experimented with iTerm and then removed it, and now your font looks wonky, try this. Worked for me
If you click the "funnel" icon to the right of the search bar you'll see an option to only show modified settings now.

wjandrea · Accepted Answer · 2025-03-07 01:11:11Z

Steps to reset on Windows:

Press 'Windows-Key"+R , and enter %APPDATA%\Code\User

And delete 'setting.json' at this location.
Press 'Windows-Key"+R , and enter %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions

And delete all the extensions there.

rishi · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-23 05:51:29Z

23

On Linux environment delete the folder "~/.config/Code" to reset Visual Studio Code Settings.

answered May 23, 2019 at 5:51

rishi

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2 Comments

may Over a year ago

but only the user settings here, not all the settings

superjojo140 Over a year ago

On Linux you can use this guide: Reset all user settings for VSCode (Code OSS) on Linux

DevLoverUmar · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-05 06:57:53Z

23

You can reset both the user and workspace settings in VS Code as shown in the following screenshots

edited Jan 5, 2022 at 6:57

answered Oct 16, 2020 at 5:32

DevLoverUmar

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Comments

Vishal Kumar · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-26 07:48:43Z

16

Go to Menu Bar. Click on File->Preferences->Settings
On the top right corner of the Settings tab, click on the 3 dots button ...->Show Modified Settings
You can now reset all the modified settings individually

answered May 26, 2021 at 7:48

Vishal Kumar

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1 Comment

klewis Over a year ago

Very nice! By using @modified in the search bar, a developer can click on the modified setting, one by one and click the associated work-wheel icon to reset "that" setting if desired. This approach still works today in both VSCode and VSCodium.

Sameeksha Kumari · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-21 02:54:40Z

Go to File -> preferences -> settings.

On the right panel you will see all customized user settings so you can remove the ones you want to reset. On doing so the default settings mentioned in left pane will become active instantly.

Sajan Chhipa · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-13 07:13:21Z

The best easiest way I found to reset settings:

Open Settings page (Ctrl+Shift+P):

Go onto your desire setting section to reset, click on icon and then Reset Setting :

VonC · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-23 08:24:42Z

If you just need to reset your profile for a quick test, VSCode 1.71 (Aug. 2022) will propose:

transient profiles

These profiles are deleted automatically once the last window which uses it is closed.

You can create and associate a transient profile from
CLI by passing --profile-transient flag. Eg:
code <folder-uri> --profile-transient 
UI from Command Palette using command Create Transient Settings Profile
These will create a transient settings profile and associate it to the workspace.
Once the workspace is closed (or uses different profile) this profile is deleted.

That can help before going nuclear and deleting your current profile and VSCode settings.

This is released to VSCode Insiders today.

Ivone Djaja · Accepted Answer · 2025-06-06 01:17:34Z

In Visual Studio Code version: 1.98.2

Ctrl + Shift + P to open the Command Palette
Type view: reset view locations
Tap ENTER or click on View: Reset View Locations

Pellet · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-22 04:24:34Z

Heads up, if clearing the settings doesn't fix your issue you may need to uninstall the extensions as well.

mckenzm · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-19 04:46:33Z

If all you want to do is "reset perspective" ala Eclipse (and why is this not in Code anyway?) then select [View] -> [Open View] -> [Run and Debug].

This puts all the panes back, this is what most people mean by "reset perspective".

theSparky · Accepted Answer · 2023-08-31 17:19:54Z

In addition to the locations of the 'User' settings, the settings specific to a 'Remote' WSL distro:

are stored in that WSL2 distro at:

$HOME/.vscode-server/data/Machine/settings.json

and the wslpath in Windows would look like:

\\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu-22.04\home\ *wslUser* \.vscode-server\data\Machine\settings.json

Daniel Melo · Accepted Answer · 2023-10-28 23:24:31Z

I'm just doing an update which worked for me.

SO Windows: Access the directory (using the selected answer as reference)

Windows %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json, but instead of removing the settings.json file, I've just removed the entired USer folder then restarted the VSCode.

Hope that it can be a quick solution for someone

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