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Last active August 11, 2025 19:40
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Using Visual Studio Code in WSL2 locally
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readme.md

This writeup assumes you are using Ubuntu for WSL2 on an x64 machine.

  1. Download the Visual Studio Code package, typically found here: https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=linux-deb-x64
  2. Update apt and install the package: sudo apt update && sudo apt install /path/to/code_1.102.3-1753759567_amd64.deb
  3. During installation it should prompt you to install the apt repository and signing key to enable auto-updating using the system's package manager. This is recommended.
  4. Type code to start.

Two things I've noticed so far:

  • The window will be drawn tiny if using a high resolution monitor. Use the Electron (Chromium) startup parameter --force-device-scale-factor=1.x to fix this.
  • Before startup you will be prompted to install Code for Windows instead. I haven't yet found a reason to needlessly do remote development via SSH over doing it locally inside WSL2. Use the DONT_PROMPT_WSL_INSTALL=1 environment variable to fix this.

Using the above, my ~/bash_aliases includes this:

alias code='DONT_PROMPT_WSL_INSTALL=1 code --force-device-scale-factor=1.75'
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