Select the Arduino extension and click install. Open VS Code and press Ctrl + Shift + X to open the Extensions panel and type vscode-arduino. Note that this also has a dependency on the C/C++ extension so that will also be installed. This extension is a wrapper for the Arduino IDE. To work with Arduino we will need to install Visual Studio Code extension for Arduino. With VS Code we have access to a rich set of built-in features and well as community-built extensions. Compare the ~25 MB single executable Arduino CLI installation to the >500 MB Arduino IDE 2.I use VS Code for a lot of my development work so it would be nice to be able to work in the same dev environment and work flow. You can now install only the functionality you need and skip all the rest that you would never use. This separation of the GUI application from the rest of the functionality is actually a very good thing for applications where the GUI aspects are not needed, such as scripts and alternative development environments like the VS Code application. You can learn about how to use it in Microsoft's documentation here: The VS Code extension has support for use with Arduino CLI in addition to Arduino IDE 1.x. This tool is named ' Arduino CLI':Īrduino CLI actually provides all the non-GUI functionality for Arduino IDE 2.x under the hood. The reason why the lack of a command line interface in Arduino IDE 2.x is not a deficiency, and why this lack does not impact the VS Code extension users going forward is that Arduino has created a dedicated command line tool that does everything the Arduino IDE 1.x command line interface did and far more, in a far more powerful, efficient, and user friendly manner. Arduino IDE 2.x does not have a command line interface.

The reason for this incompatibility is that the VS Code extension uses the command line interface of Arduino IDE 1.x. You are correct that there is no way to use Arduino IDE 2.x as a dependency of that VS Code extension as there was with Arduino IDE 1.x.

Arduino visual studio code