See what's listening, find the right port instantly, and free it with one click — right inside VS Code.
The two most-installed port extensions are abandoned and unreliable, and VS Code's built-in Ports view is for tunneling — it can't tell you what owns a local port or kill it. Port Kill does exactly that.
Features
Live port list in its own Activity Bar view — every listening TCP/UDP port with its process, PID, and bind address. Auto-refreshes while visible.
Search & kill (Port Kill: Search & Kill Port) — fuzzy-search by port number or process name and kill from the picker.
Smart suggestions — known dev ports in use are surfaced first and labeled (3000 — React/Next.js, 5432 — PostgreSQL, 6379 — Redis, …).
One-click kill with a confirmation modal (graceful SIGTERM → SIGKILL, taskkill /F /T on Windows).
Docker aware — maps published host ports to their container name/image.
Process identity, not just a PID — framework/service labels, command, user.
Kill all dev ports in one action.
Cross-platform — macOS (lsof), Linux (ss/lsof), Windows (Get-NetTCPConnection).
Safe by default — hides system/IDE processes and confirms before killing.
Usage
Open the Port Kill view in the Activity Bar (plug icon). Hover any row for inline Kill / Open in browser actions, or right-click for copy actions. Use the status-bar plug counter or Port Kill: Search & Kill Port for the fast search flow.
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
portKill.confirmBeforeKill
true
Confirm before killing a process.
portKill.refreshInterval
3000
Auto-refresh interval (ms) while the view is visible. 0 disables.
portKill.showStatusBar
true
Show the active-dev-port count in the status bar.
portKill.hideSystemProcesses
true
Hide common system/IDE processes.
portKill.groupBy
category
Group ports by category, or none for a flat list.
portKill.killSignal
graceful
graceful (TERM→KILL) or force (KILL immediately) on Unix.
Notes
Desktop only — listing and killing ports requires local OS access.
Killing a root/other-user process needs elevated privileges; Port Kill reports a clear error instead of failing silently.
A Docker-published port is held by docker-proxy; killing it stops the forward, not the container's internal service.
Development
npm install
npm run watch # esbuild watch
# press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host
npm run typecheck
npm run package # production bundle
