How Do I Setup Microsoft Visual Studio: Code as a Default Editor?

Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a really nice editor and I would like to make it my default normal (not terminal) text-editor over Gedit, Emacs, or Vim. (I know, I'm so evil.)

There's no way for me to add it via a GUI option and I've looked at several online suggestions, but all of them are fairly out of date or unhelpful.

Do any of you have any suggestions? I'll take a terminal solution, but if you guys have a GUI one, that'll do too.

2 Answers

From Microsoft Visual Studio Code's Doc:

Setting VS Code as the default text editor

xdg-open

You can set the default text editor for text files (text/plain) that is used by xdg-open with the following command:

bash xdg-mime default code.desktop text/plain

Debian alternatives system

Debian-based distributions allow setting a default editor using the Debian alternatives system, without concern for the MIME type. You can set this by running the following and selecting code:

bash sudo update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/code

If Visual Studio Code doesn't show up as an alternative to editor, you need to register it:

bash sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor $(which code) 10

Additionally, there is this issue mentioning following:

Some need you to set the default for a mime type like:~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list

[Default Applications]
text/plain=code-insiders.desktop

Which adds Open With Visual Studio Code - Insiders (Ctrl+O) to the nautilus context menu.

These two worked for me:

1. Using xdg-utils:

xdg-mime default code.desktop text/plain

2. In this file:

/usr/share/applications/defaults.list

replace this line:

text/plain=gedit.desktop

with:

text/plain=code.desktop

Note: update-alternatives affects non-graphical environment (terminal) only