Sourcegraph for Visual Studio Code


Sourcegraph’s code search allows you to find & fix things fast across all your code.
Sourcegraph for VS Code allows you to search millions of open source repositories right from your VS Code IDE—for free. You can learn from helpful code examples, search best practices, and re-use code from millions of repositories across the open source universe.
Sourcegraph’s Code Intelligence feature provides fast, cross-repository navigation with “Go to definition” and “Find references” features, allowing you to understand new code quickly and find answers in your code across codebases of any size.
You can read more about Sourcegraph on our website.
Installation
From the Visual Studio Marketplace:
- Install Sourcegraph from the Visual Studio Marketplace.
- Launch VS Code, and click on the Sourcegraph (Wildcard) icon in the VS Code Activity Bar to open the Sourcegraph extension. Alternatively, you can launch the extension by pressing Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P and searching for “Sourcegraph: Open search tab.”
From within VS Code:
- Open the extensions tab on the left side of VS Code (Cmd+Shift+X or Ctrl+Shift+X).
- Search for
Sourcegraph
-> Install
and Reload
.
From Gitpod VS Code Workspaces:
- Open the
Extensions view
by clicking on the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the side of your Gitpod VS Code workspace
- Search for Sourcegraph ->
Install
and Reload
.
Using the Sourcegraph extension
To get started and open the Sourcegraph extension, simply click the Sourcegraph (Wildcard) icon in the VS Code Activity Bar.
Sourcegraph functions like any search engine; simply type in your search query, and Sourcegraph will populate search results.
Sourcegraph offers 3 different ways to search:
- Literal search
- Structural search
- Regular expressions
Sourcegraph also accepts filters to narrow down search results, such as repo
, file
, and lang
. Check out our search cheat sheet.
For example, you can search for "auth provider" in a Go repository with a search like this one:
repo:sourcegraph/sourcegraph lang:go auth provider

Adding and searching your own code
Creating an account
In addition to searching open source code, you can create a Sourcegraph account to search your own private and public repositories. You can create an account and sync your repositories with the following steps:
- Click the
Create an account
button in the sidebar of the Sourcegraph extension. You will be directed to sourcegraph.com in your browser.
- Follow the instructions to create and configure your Sourcegraph instance
Connecting to your Sourcegraph instance
- In Sourcegraph, in your account settings, navigate to
Access tokens
, then click Generate new token
.
- Once you have generated a token, navigate to your VS Code Settings, then navigate to "Extension settings".
- Navigate to
Code preferences
, then click Settings
.
- Search for
Sourcegraph
, and enter the newly generated access token as well as your Sourcegraph instance URL.
- Add custom headers using the
sourcegraph.requestHeaders
setting (added in v2.0.9) if a specific header is required to make connection to your private instance.
Adding it to your workspace's recommended extensions
- Create a
.vscode
folder (if not already present) in the root of your repository
- Inside that folder, create a new file named
extensions.json
(if it doesn't already exist) with the following structure.
{
"recommendations": ["sourcegraph.sourcegraph"]
}
- If the file does exist, append
"sourcegraph.sourcegraph"
to the "recommendations"
array.
- Push the changes to your repository for your other colleagues to share.
Alternatively you can use the Extensions: Configure Recommended Extensions (Workspace Folder)
command from within VS Code.
Keyboard Shortcuts:
Description |
Mac |
Linux / Windows |
Open Sourcegraph Search Tab/Search Selection |
Cmd+Shift+8 |
Ctrl+Shift+8 |
Open File in Sourcegraph Cloud |
Option+A |
Alt+A |
Search Selected Text in Sourcegraph Cloud |
Option+S |
Alt+S |
Extension Settings
This extension contributes the following settings:
Setting |
Description |
Example |
sourcegraph.url |
Specify your on-premises Sourcegraph instance here, if applicable. The extension is connected to Sourcegraph Cloud by default. |
"https://your-sourcegraph.com" |
sourcegraph.accessToken |
[Depreciated after 2.2.12] The access token to query the Sourcegraph API. Required to use this extension with private instances. Create a new access token at ${SOURCEGRAPH_URL}/users/<sourcegraph-username>/settings/tokens |
null |
sourcegraph.remoteUrlReplacements |
Object, where each key is replaced by value in the remote url. |
{"github": "gitlab", "master": "main"} |
sourcegraph.defaultBranch |
String to set the name of the default branch. Always open files in the default branch. |
"master" |
sourcegraph.requestHeaders |
Takes object, where each value pair will be added to the request headers made to your instance. |
{"Cache-Control": "no-cache", "Proxy-Authenticate": "Basic"} |
sourcegraph.basePath |
The file path on the machine to the folder that is expected to contain all repositories. We will try to open search results using the basePath. |
"/Users/USERNAME/Documents/" |
sourcegraph.proxyProtocol |
The protocol to use when proxying requests to the Sourcegraph instance. |
"http", "https" |
sourcegraph.proxyHost |
The host to use when proxying requests to the Sourcegraph instance. It shouldn't include a protocol (like "http://") or a port (like ":7080"). When this is set, port must be set as well. |
"localhost" |
sourcegraph.proxyPort |
The port to use when proxying requests to the Sourcegraph instance. When this is set, host must be set as well. |
80, 443, 7080, 9090 |
sourcegraph.proxyPath |
The full path to a file when proxying requests to the Sourcegraph instance via a UNIX socket. |
"/home/user/path/unix.socket" |
Questions & Feedback
Please take a look at our troubleshooting docs for known issues and common issues in the VS Code extension.
Feedback and feature requests can be submitted to our VS Code Extension Feedback Discussion Board on GitHub.
Uninstallation
- Open the extensions tab on the left side of VS Code (Cmd+Shift+X or Ctrl+Shift+X).
- Search for
Sourcegraph
-> Gear icon -> Uninstall
and Reload
.
Changelog
Click here to check the full changelog.
VS Code will auto-update extensions to the highest version available. Even if you have opted into a pre-release version, you will be updated to the released version when a higher version is released.
The Sourcegraph extension uses major.EVEN_NUMBER.patch (eg. 2.0.1) for release versions and major.ODD_NUMBER.patch (eg. 2.1.1) for pre-release versions.```
Development
Please see the CONTRIBUTING document if you are interested in contributing directly to our code base.