Downgrading Visual Studio Code extension

TPodolak

1. Introduction

For time to time when you update Visual Studio Code’s extension you realize that there were some breaking changes you don’t like or the extension has a bug which prevents you from using it. Usually, in this kind of situations, you would like to just go back to the version you were using previously rather than stop using the extension at all. Unfortunately, VSCode doesn’t give us an option to install a specific version of the extension for now. Luckily there is an easy way of doing that manually.

2. Installation

Let’s assume that I would like to downgrade C# plugin from newest version (1.8.1 at the moment) to 1.7.0. First of all, we have to uninstall current extension. As there as some issues of doing that via command line, just do it from VSCode by clicking on uninstall button in extension screen.
Initial
In the next step we have to download proper extension’s version using vsassets api. The url pattern looks as follows

In my case, the variables looks as follow

  • ${publisher} – ms-vscode
  • ${extension_name} – csharp
  • ${version} – 1.7.0

and entire url can be rewritten as

Having the link prepared we can paste it into browser address bar and download the extension. Once the file is downloaded, run VSCode, hit CTRL+SHIFT+P, type vsix in command line and choose

vsix
Select the file you’ve just downloaded and restart editor after installation. From now on you can use older version of your favorite extension.
after

Downgrading Visual Studio Code extension

One thought on “Downgrading Visual Studio Code extension”

  1. Thanks a lot! Works like a charm.

    (Given there is absolutely zero QA done on official VS Code extensions, it’s annoying that there’s no easy GUI-based way to downgrade, but I guess we can’t really expect nice things from Microsoft…)

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