VSCodium is VSCode without "Telemetry" (Tracking!)

[nelsonic]

"Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking."

https://vscodium.com

Either grab the latest release from: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases

Or follow the download/install instructions on the website. e.g: on Mac:

brew cask install vscodium

Output

==> Verifying SHA-256 checksum for Cask 'vscodium'.
==> Installing Cask vscodium
==> Moving App 'VSCodium.app' to '/Applications/VSCodium.app'.
==> Linking Binary 'code' to '/usr/local/bin/code'.
🍺  vscodium was successfully installed!

If you see the following warning:

Open the Security & Privacy tab in your System Preferences and click "Open Anyway":

The next time you open the app you will see:

Click on "Open" to continue opening VSCodium

You will see:

VSCodium is compatible with all the plugins/extensions that you know and love in VSCode. Just install and VSCodium and pickup exactly where you left off.

using the code shortcut in your terminal will open VSCodium e.g:

code .

No more tracking from Microsoft. 🎉

[nelsonic]

One thing that I've found annoying about Vscodium is for some reason the Elixir Language Support (syntax highlighting and formatting) is not available when searched for in the extensions search:

It means my Elixir code looks like this lame grey:

It appears that VSCodium has a separate extensions library so it does not display the default ones. More detail + instructions available in: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#extensions-marketplace

"Modify the extensionsGallery section of the product.json file" ...

I searched for "product.json vscodium":

The results were useless so I kept refining (adding detail) to my query: "where is product.json in vscodium" and obviously the results were still useless.

So I went digging in finder on my Mac ... 📁 🔍 But I did not find a product.json file ... 😞 Apparently the brew version is a compiled binary so there is no product.json file ... See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extensions-in-compiled-vscode

What I did find were the extensions for both .vscode (the Microsoft one that tracks your keystrokes!) and .vscode_oss (VSCodium)

To get back to this, simply open your terminal and type:

cd ~/

That will take you to the "home" directory of your "user" on the OS. If you ls (list the contents of the directory), you will see both .vscode and .vscode-oss (VSCodium):

I simply copied over the extensions from ~/.vscode/extensions to ~/.vscode_oss/extensions

cp -R ~/.vscode/extensions/* ~/.vscode_oss/extensions

and that gave me Elixir Syntax highlighting: 🎉

This is obviously not a good longterm solution and it won't work for people who haven't previously used VSCode. So we still need a more robust solution. 💭 I'm going to get back to my code for now, but if I ever need to install just VSCodium on a new computer, I will investigate this further. 👍

[nelsonic]

Found it! Open your terminal/iTerm and go to:

cd /Applications/VSCodium.app/Contents/Resources/app
ls -lath

Edit the file using VSCodium:

code product.json

If you search for "extensionsGallery" you should see:

Replace:

  "extensionsGallery": {
    "serviceUrl": "https://open-vsx.org/vscode/gallery",
    "itemUrl": "https://open-vsx.org/vscode/item"
  },

With:

"extensionsGallery": {
    "serviceUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery",
    "itemUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items"
},

So you now have this:

After restarting VSCodium, if we open the Extensions Marketplace:

If you search for your favourite extension or programming language, you will see all of them:

[nelsonic]

Attempting to launch/run VSCodium from terminal with code or codium but get:

zsh: command not found: code

or

zsh: command not found: codium

according to https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/190#issuecomment-500707708 open the Command Palette: ⇧⌘P (Shift Apple P)

Type: "install cod" and press the Enter key to activate the command:

Now in your terminal, you can type codium . to start the VSCodium program with the CWD as the project.

[nelsonic]

Just tried setting up on a new mac and got the following error:

/usr/local/bin/code: line 6: python: command not found
/usr/local/bin/code: line 10: ./MacOS/Electron: No such file or directory

Going to do a bit of Googling ... 🔍

[nelsonic]

Known issue: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/141738 Hot fix solution: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/141738#issuecomment-1029507799

vi /usr/local/bin/code

change python => python3 on the following line

- function realpath() { python -c ...
+ function realpath() { python3 -c ...

using python3 works. ✅

[nelsonic]

The last comment in the thread is actually a more elegant solution: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/141738#issuecomment-1070966278

I had python3 installed through brew so I simply ran: ln -s /opt/homebrew/bin/python3 /opt/homebrew/bin/python

[iteles]

@nelsonic This issue has been so helpful, thank you!

I got the same but without the Open option (when installing with homebrew on mac brew install --cask vscodium):

So you have to go to System Preferences and you should see the blocked app:

Clicking on Open Anyway gets you this pop-up:

And here you can click on Open and get access to VSCodium 👌

[nelsonic]

Glad you were able to get it working. 👩‍💻⭐️

[squew]

Just FYI it has nothing to do with telemetry... Moreover theit might be telemetry in all os iOS, Macos, even Ubuntu or any OS, and in most apps, and it's not new... But elsewhere where paranoid people never find them, even if it written black on white.. Or depending on the theme... It's hilarious. Pfff.you may not what is telemetry and if you're worked about you privacy, we'll you may have needed to be more careful about Google. Because Microsoft never was in the collecting private data business. Psychosis, this is what it is. Your stories come from nowhere 'ever existed don't exist. And I saw like 100 repos blocking Microsoft of vscode. Somehow they never check the network,, because there might like 50 other sources of telemetry.... And you macos, telemetry everywhere. But apple is honest and nice, I understand.