The Integrated Terminal and Workspaces

The integrated terminal

When you’re developing scripts or software, you don’t just write a bunch of code at once and it works perfectly (if only that were true). Instead, you write a little code, test it out to see if it works, tweak, and repeat until you’ve accomplished your task.

To run code in development, you’d typically have to Alt-Tab to another window like a console or some other external tool. If that external tool is available via the command-line or you’re writing PowerShell code, you don’t have to leave VS Code and use the integrated terminal instead.

The integrated terminal is integrated directly into VS Code. It isn’t an external console or window. It sits below your editor tabs at all times (unless you close it). By default, the terminal is a legacy command prompt (cmd.exe). However, as you can see below, once you install the PowerShell extension, VS Code defaults to a PowerShell console.