How to update VS Code on Windows?

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I have VS Code version 1.37.1 and I want to update to the current available version 1.43. My OS is Windows 10.

How can I update the current version to the latest?. Like in Eclipse, check for updates is not updating the installation, rather it gives me a zip.

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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.

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My problem was that I had VS Code open as Administrator. After closing it and opening it normally I got the update to appear once again under the settings icon and in the Help menu.

If you cannot do that you can trigger the update with this command written in the terminal:

winget upgrade --id Microsoft.VisualStudioCode
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My problem was with a later version, where update options did not appear under the Help menu. This may be because I ran a user install on a Win 2022 VM where I am Administrator user.

The above solutions did not work but I was able to resolve by running the latest user installer over the existing install (turns out the user install of VS Code does not appear in Control Panel, Uninstall program listing.) Currently this can be downloaded from https://code.visualstudio.com/.

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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'.

VS Code Help>Update

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.

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Thank you Felix, downloading the System installer solved my issue. Now I can check for updates in VS Code as Windows 11 in Administrator mode.

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/

My problem was that running VS Code with elevated permissions was not automatically updating and there was no option to Update in the Command Palette, Help, or System menus.

Auto-update was set to default in VS Code settings (tried them all) but I couldn't see updates 'until I reinstalling using System installer instead of User installer.

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

Make sure it's not none enter image description here

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

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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.

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For VS Code Insiders, the following works.

winget upgrade --id Microsoft.VisualStudioCode.Insiders
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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.

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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.