James Q Quick

Developer. Speaker. Teacher.

Top Visual Studio Code Git Extensions in 2020


Although VS Code has some great built-in functionality for Git, by finding the right Visual Studio Code extensions, you can power up your Git workflow right inside of your editor. Let’s take a look at the top Visual Studio Code extensions for Git and Github!

Make sure to read all the way through. The last one is powerful enough to replace them all!

Git History

This extension lets you quickly investigate the history of a line or file. You’ll have access to commit information, view diffs, etc.

Git Blame

Everyone is looking for someone to blame when something goes wrong (not really, but still), and Git Blame will provide you that information. It will show you at a glance who was the last person to change a file.

Git Project Manager

Ever wanted to easily open up other projects in VS Code? Well, this extension will let you do just that with Git projects. You can specify which directory to look in for Git projects. I leave all of my code projects in a code folder. This way, I can easily use this extension to open projects from that directory.

Open in Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab, VisualStudio.com

Sometimes, it’s helpful to view a file in Github (or other source control providers). This extension gives you the option to directly open a file in the browser at Github.com (and others).

Github Pull Requests

With this extension, you can handle all of your Github Pull Requests right inside of VS Code. This is pretty neat because you can see an organized list, check out preview versions, and merge.

Git Extension Pack

This extension will install several of the other extensions for you as a pack.

  • Git History
  • Project Manager
  • Git Lens
  • gitignore
  • Open in Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab, VisualStudio.com

Git Lens

Finally, the extension to best all other Git extensions. This one easily replaces several of the ones we have already mentioned. It has blame and history information. It also, let’s you compare code from different branches, view remote branches, and so much more!

Wrap Up

My favorite thing about VS Code is the ecosystem of extensions, and they don’t fall short in the Git realm. I’m curious, what extensions are you using? Are there any I missed? Let me know on Twitter, @jamesqquick.