How to update VS Code on Windows?

VS Code will automatically update itself on windows 10. If you'd like to force an update check there's an option available for that under 'Help > Check for Updates'.

If the update still doesn't complete, you can run the installer from here as described in the official Visual Studio Code Documentation under Docs » Supporting » Howtoupdate, found here.

If Update:Mode in VS Code's setting is on 'none' , 'Check for Updates ...' option will disappear from Help. Just be sure it's not on 'none' then you can check for updates.

2021-12-15, if you don't see Check for Updates... then Settings

Make sure it's not none

Then Help, Check for updates..., it won't auto-install. Once it downloads the update, either Help, Install update, or

Normally you don't need to do anything. The default configuration auto-updates and tells you it needs a restart.

If you experience different behaviour then either someone has interfered with settings in VS Code or the platform (Win/Lin/Osx) is misconfigured.

Type Ctrl+, or your platform equivalent and then filter for "update", then inspect your settings to see what may be mucked up. You can also force an update in the Help menu, and if this results in the download of a zip file it's not VS Code that's messed up, it's your platform.

Running this from the command prompt seemed to work for me:

winget upgrade --id Microsoft.VisualStudioCode

I think because I was running vscode as administrator I did not see the Help->Check for updates menu item.

If your update settings are OK, then there is one other possibility. Normally, you would have installed this huge piece of bloatware for your own user account only, using the "VSCodeUserSetup-.exe" installer.

But there is also a "system installer" which installs VSCode into "C:\Program Files" (configuration is still kept per-user). If you installed "VSCodeSetup-.exe" (note: no "User" in the installer file name), then you have an administrative install and will not get full auto-updates, AFAIK.