How to find settings.json In VSCode

4 min readOct 6, 2022

The settings.json file contains all of your Visual Studio Code settings. There is no quick way of opening it without going through plethora of other VSCode menus. So here are pretty much your only options.

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How to open settings.json file in VSCode

Don’t get me wrong. VSCode is an amazing editor.

It can be awkward trying to find Settings by having to go through plethora of options before actually getting to the settings file itself.

Why doesn’t VSCode have a simple settings buttons in its dashboard?

When looking for VScode settings for the first time this might be in particular annoying. This quick tutorial was created to show you how to open settings.json (the main settings file in VS Code) fast 🙂

How To Open settings.json file in VS Code?

And the quickest way to open settings.json file in Visual Studio Code is…

(Warning: it is not so fast.)

First, open User Settings page:

Press Ctrl + , (comma) on Windows, or…

Press ⌘ + , (comma) on Mac.

Or…

Go to File menu
Select Preferences
Then select Settings

Next, on the User Settings screen, click on a small button that looks like a new file icon in upper right corner of the VSCode dashboard:

Finding settings.json via User Settings button in upper right corner on Search settings view.

Image: fastest way to open settings.json is through this button.

As with any other editor, there are many ways to do the same thing.

To open settings.json file in VSCode you can also do it via something called Command Pallete. But it’s not as intuitive. And you will have to do even more clicking and typing than previous example.

It’s explained in next section, however.

Here is another way of opening settings.json file in VS Code.

Where is settings.json file in Visual Studio Code?

To open VSCode’s settings.json file first open Command Palette.

Press Ctrl + Shift + P on Windows or…

Press ⌘ + shift + P on Mac

This opens Command Palette in VSCode, which is an input box. Typing into it will cause a the menu show a list of drop down items relevant to your search query.

Type settings.json and click on one of the options on drop down.

(You can also open defaultSettings.json file here.)

From now on, your settings.json file will be open in one of the tabs. You can right click on it and “pin” it to the tabs bar, to make sure it can be easily found during current session.