Visual Studio Code Portable

Portable Visual Studio Code for Windows.
A dependency-free, single-EXE launcher that downloads, runs, and auto-updates VS Code entirely from its own folder — no installer, no DLLs, no traces.

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What it is

CodePortable turns Visual Studio Code into a truly portable Windows application. Drop a single CodePortable.exe onto a USB stick, a network share, or any folder — on first run it fetches the latest official VS Code build, unpacks it next to itself, and keeps every setting, extension and bit of history inside that same folder. Move the folder, and your whole editor moves with it.

It is a small, self-contained launcher written in Go: one executable, no bundled DLLs, no .NET/runtime dependency, no console window. All UI — download progress, update prompt, error dialogs — is drawn with the native Windows API.

Why

• Truly portable. Visual Studio Code plus all user data (settings, extensions, history) lives in one movable folder. Nothing is written to %APPDATA%, the registry, or Program Files.
• Always up to date. Every launch checks for a newer VS Code release and offers a one-click update — with a native progress bar, not a terminal.
• Safe updates with history. Updates never overwrite in place. The previous version is archived (including its data) so you can roll back in seconds.
• Zero dependencies. A single ~6 MB EXE. Nothing to install, nothing to ship alongside it.

Download

Grab the latest build — always the same stable link:

➡ github.com/jboxberger/codeportable/releases/latest/download/CodePortable.exe

Put CodePortable.exe in an empty folder of your choice and run it. That's it. Each release also ships a CodePortable.exe.sha256 file so you can verify the download with Get-FileHash.

How it works

• First run. If there is no current\Code.exe next to the launcher, it downloads the latest VS Code portable archive (Stable, win32-x64-archive), verifies its SHA-256 checksum, unpacks it into current\, creates the portable current\data\ folder, and starts VS Code. Download and extraction run inside a native popup with a progress bar.
• Every launch. The launcher reads the installed version from the current\Code.exe version resource and asks the update server whether a newer one exists. If so, a dialog offers to update. Offline? VS Code just starts normally.
• Arguments (e.g. a file or folder to open) are passed straight through to Code.exe, resolved against your current working directory.

Version history & one-click revert

Updates never overwrite anything. The new version is built completely in a staging folder (including a copy of your user data); then the current current\ folder — together with its data\ folder — is moved to old\<version>\, and the new build is activated as current\. Every previous version is therefore a complete, self-contained backup.

Revert: rename (or delete) current\, rename the desired folder from old\ back to current\ — done, including that version's settings.

old\ keeps only the newest keepversions builds (default 5, configurable); older ones are pruned automatically after an update.

Cancelable & crash-safe

Download and extraction happen entirely inside the install.tmp staging folder and can be canceled at any time via the Cancel button (or the window's X) — on cancel, install.tmp is removed and the existing installation is left untouched. The switch-over itself is just two rename operations; renaming the old current\ doubles as a lock test and fails while VS Code is still running. A crash therefore leaves either a leftover install.tmp (cleaned up on next start) or a current\ without Code.exe (triggers a fresh install on next start). User data is never deleted — at worst it sits in the most recent old\<version>\ folder.

Configuration — config.ini

On first run the launcher creates a well-commented config.ini next to the EXE:

Key	Meaning	Default
apiurl	API endpoint used to resolve the latest version and its download URL.	VS Code Stable, win32-x64-archive
keepversions	How many previous versions to keep in old\ (0 = keep none).	5
loglevel	Minimum severity written to the logfile next to the EXE (<ExeName>.log): error, warn, or info.	warn

The logfile is created only when a message of at least loglevel occurs, so a cleanly working launcher leaves no logfile behind. Set loglevel = info for a full step-by-step trace when diagnosing update or startup problems (timeouts, DNS failures, HTTP errors); error logs failures only. The file is truncated once it exceeds 512 KB.

Folder layout

CodePortable.exe      <- the launcher
config.ini            <- download source + number of versions to keep
current\              <- active VS Code instance (Code.exe, ...)
current\data\         <- portable data folder (settings, extensions)
old\1.120.0\          <- previous version incl. its data snapshot
old\1.121.0\
install.tmp\          <- staging during download/extract, deleted afterwards

Build from source

Requirements: Go 1.21+ and Windows (the launcher targets GOOS=windows). Then:

.\build.ps1

The script embeds the icon (code.ico) and the application manifest (Common Controls v6, DPI-aware) as a Windows resource, then builds a static GUI EXE with CGO_ENABLED=0 and -H=windowsgui. At runtime it uses only Windows system libraries (user32, kernel32, gdi32, comctl32, version) — no DLLs to ship.

Run the tests with:

go test ./...

Source overview

File	Purpose
main.go	Flow control: first run, update check, archiving, launch
install.go	Version query, checksummed download, extraction, background copy
config.go	Read config.ini (created on first run)
progressui.go	Win32 progress window (status, progress bar, cancel)
dialog.go	Self-drawn Win32 dialog (auto-sized, English buttons)
winui.go	Dialog helpers (Yes/No, error, retry/continue/cancel)
log.go	Logfile next to the EXE (levels, lazy creation)
version.go	Read product version from the EXE version resource
main_test.go	Tests for version comparison, pruning, archive naming
build.ps1	Build script incl. icon/manifest embedding

FAQ

Nothing happens when I start it — no window opens. Visual Studio Code checks a machine-wide mutex (vscode-updating) at startup. If another VS Code installation on the same machine is updating (its silent Inno-Setup updater holds that lock), any VS Code — including the portable one — refuses to start until the lock is released. Close the other VS Code so its update can finish; CodePortable detects this situation and shows a clear dialog with Retry / Continue anyway / Cancel instead of silently doing nothing.

Does it phone home / send telemetry? The launcher itself only contacts Microsoft's official VS Code update endpoint to check for and download new versions. Everything else is Visual Studio Code's own behavior, configurable inside VS Code.

Is this an official Microsoft product? No. CodePortable is an independent open-source launcher. "Visual Studio Code" and "VS Code" are products of Microsoft; this project just downloads and runs the official builds.

License

MIT © Juri Boxberger

Visual Studio Code is downloaded from Microsoft's official distribution servers under its own license.