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migrating from vscode to vscodium

2026-01-20

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Why

I dunno, mostly I've been annoyed with the Copilot window popping up on startup. And I've been wanting to pare down my editor features to keep things simple anyways. But I'm also not quite at the level with vim motions and grammar and all the surrounding not-an-IDE stuff that I don't feel ready to make a bigger switch. So VSCodium seemed like a good fit for now.

Install VSCodium

# Install vscodium via Homebrew
brew install --cask vscodium
  • Install codium command in PATH
    • To do this, open the Command Palette with Shift + ⌘ + P, type Shell command, and select Shell Command: Install 'codium' command in PATH

Migrate extensions

The following commands create a list of extension install commands on your Desktop.

code --list-extensions | xargs -L 1 echo codium --install-extension > ~/Desktop/install-vscode-extensions-to-codium.sh && chmod u+x ~/Desktop/install-vscode-extensions-to-codium.sh

Once you've installed VSCodium and the codium command in your PATH, you can install all the extensions by running:

~/Desktop/install-vscode-extensions-to-codium.sh

Migrate keyboard shortcuts

To open Keyboard Shortcuts JSON, open the Command Palette with Shift + ⌘ + P, type Keyboard JSON, and select Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON). Do this in your old VSCode install, and your new VSCodium install, copying the shortcuts between them.

  • Copy keyboard shortcuts JSON from VSCode
  • Past keyboard shortcuts JSON into VSCodium

Migrate user settings

To open User Settings JSON, open the Command Palette with Shift + ⌘ + P, type User JSON, and select Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON). Do this in your old VSCode install, and your new VSCodium install, copying the shortcuts between them.

  • Copy user settings JSON from VSCode
  • Past user settings JSON into VSCodium

Set up an alias for the CLI command

Manual steps:

  • Run codium ~/.zshrc, and set up an alias so code now opens codium
    • Note: if applicable, you should open VSCode and uninstall the 'code' command first
    • Alias in ~/.zshrc will be something like alias code="codium"

Made this stupid little script to do this faster:

if grep 'alias code' ~/.zshrc;
then
    echo "Found";
else
    echo "Not found";
    echo "\n" >> ~/.zshrc
    echo "# As of 2026-01-20, I've started using VSCodium" >> ~/.zshrc
    echo "# instead of VSCode: https://vscodium.com/" >> ~/.zshrc
    echo "# Old habits of typing code ... die hard" >> ~/.zshrc
    echo "# so I'm aliasing code to codium" >> ~/.zshrc
    echo "alias code=\"codium\"" >> ~/.zshrc
fi