Using The Windows Linux Subsystem Terminal In Visual Studio Code

If you’re like me, you’ve been using the Linux Subsystem in Windows for a while now. The amazement that I can run Ubuntu Linux from within Windows itself is still not lost on me.

Recently whilst I went on a configuration rampage in VSCode, really fine-tuning my settings to create the best development environment possible (I’ll share those settings in a separate post), and I discovered the integrated terminal supports not only Command Prompt and PowerShell, but also the Windows System for Linux (WSL) terminal.

All you have to do is add the following to your user settings JSON file:

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe"

Now when you trigger the integrated terminal using ctrl + shift + tilde it will use the WSL terminal, giving you a true proper Unix command line to work from.