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Installing Workbench for Zephyr in VS Code Portable Mode

This guide explains how to install Workbench for Zephyr in a fully isolated, portable Visual Studio Code environment.

Portable mode allows you to evaluate or use Workbench for Zephyr without affecting your existing VS Code installation, extensions, SDKs, or system-wide tools.

This setup works on Windows, Linux, and macOS, with platform-specific notes where required.

Portable mode is also useful in situations where your user name contains spaces. In such cases, you can install the environment in any directory of your choice, avoiding path-related issues.

Why Use VS Code Portable Mode?​

Portable mode provides full isolation:

  • No impact on system-wide VS Code installations
  • No changes to global PATH, registry, or user profiles
  • Workbench for Zephyr installs its own private Python and tools
  • Safe coexistence with other embedded extensions (e.g. STM32)
  • Easy cleanup by deleting a single folder

How Portable Mode Works​

VS Code runs in portable mode when it detects a data directory next to its executable, or when explicit portable directories are provided at launch.

In portable mode:

  • Extensions are stored in data/extensions
  • User settings are stored in data/user-data
  • Workbench for Zephyr installs all tools into data/.zinstaller
  • Nothing is written to system locations

Windows​

Download and Extract​

  1. Download the ZIP archive using the following link: https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=win32-x64-archive

  2. Extract the archive into a directory of your choice (for example, D:\Tools\VSCode-Zephyr-Portable).

  3. Create an empty folder named data in the root of the extracted directory. This enables Visual Studio Code Portable Mode, ensuring that all settings, extensions, and user data remain fully isolated.

Your final directory layout should look like this:

D:\Tools\VSCode-Zephyr-Portable
├─ Code.exe
├─ data/
├─ bin/
├─ resources/
└─ ...
  1. Launch VS Code by running Code.exe.

Linux​

Download and Extract​

  1. Download the Linux archive (for example, x64): https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=linux-x64

  2. Extract the archive into a directory of your choice (for example, /opt/vscode-zephyr-portable).

  3. Create an empty data directory inside the extracted folder.

Directory layout:

/opt/vscode-zephyr-portable
├─ code
├─ data/
├─ bin/
├─ resources/
└─ ...
  1. Launch VS Code: ./code

macOS​

macOS supports a portable ZIP-based setup that works the same way as Linux. When using the ZIP archive, Visual Studio Code runs in portable mode by detecting a data directory next to the application binaries.

Download (choose one)​

Removing Workbench for Zephyr Completely​

Delete the portable directories. No system state is modified.

References​

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/portable