VS Code Extensions Worth Installing, and What Is Now Built In

Last updated 2026-03-31 | SPUNK13 LLC | spunk.bet

VS Code absorbs popular extension features into the core editor every few releases, so a plugin list assembled two years ago is usually carrying dead weight. Here is what to keep, what to delete, and how to tell.

Check What You Already Have Before Installing Anything

Run Developer: Startup Performance from the command palette. It lists activation time per extension. Anything taking hundreds of milliseconds on every window open is worth questioning, and the total is often more than a second of pure waiting several times a day. code --disable-extensions starts a clean instance so you can confirm whether a slowdown is the editor or your setup.

Features That No Longer Need an Extension

• Bracket pair colourisation — built in and rendered natively; the extension version was significantly slower. Enable editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled.
• Sticky scroll — pins the enclosing function or class header at the top of the viewport. Built in, off by default, worth turning on.
• Inline diff and merge conflict resolution — the three-way merge editor covers what several extensions used to.
• Basic auto-import and rename across files — handled by the language server, not a plugin.
• Search across files with regex and includes/excludes — the built-in search is fast and supports multi-file replace with a preview.

Extensions That Still Earn Their Place

Your language's official extension is non-negotiable — rust-analyzer, gopls through the Go extension, Pylance or Ruff for Python, the C/C++ tools. Almost every feature you value comes from the language server, so install the official one and skip the third-party wrappers.

ESLint and Prettier, configured to read the project's own config files, so formatting matches CI exactly rather than matching your personal settings. EditorConfig for the same reason across editors.

GitLens, for inline blame and file history — though it is heavy, and if you only want blame annotations the built-in Git integration plus git log -p covers a lot of it.

Error Lens puts diagnostics inline at the end of the line rather than requiring a hover. Small change, very high daily value.

Dev Containers, if your project ships a .devcontainer definition. This is the extension that most changes how a team onboards, because the environment stops being a wiki page.

REST Client or a similar .http file runner keeps API requests in the repository as version-controlled text instead of in a separate desktop app nobody else can see.

Categories to Be Cautious About

Extensions that upload code, snippets or telemetry to a third party deserve the same scrutiny as any dependency — read what the permissions section says, and prefer publishers with a verified badge and a real repository. Extensions with millions of installs that duplicate a built-in feature are usually inertia rather than value. And theme packs are free; icon packs cost a small amount of startup time each, which is fine if you actually use them.

Settings That Do More Than Most Extensions

"editor.formatOnSave": true,
"editor.codeActionsOnSave": { "source.organizeImports": "explicit" },
"files.autoSave": "onFocusChange",
"editor.stickyScroll.enabled": true,
"editor.linkedEditing": true,
"workbench.editor.limit.enabled": true,
"workbench.editor.limit.value": 12,
"search.exclude": { "**/node_modules": true, "**/dist": true }

The editor limit is the underrated one: capping open tabs at a dozen removes the thirty-tab sprawl that makes navigation slow and makes you reach for a tab manager extension you do not need.

Keep the Setup Portable

Turn on Settings Sync so a new machine is one sign-in away, and commit a .vscode/extensions.json with recommended extensions for the project so new contributors get the right language server and formatter without asking. Keep that list short — recommendations that install eight things get ignored wholesale.