Live Share — Real-Time Collaboration
VS Code Live Share lets you collaborate in real-time with teammates — co-editing, co-debugging, and sharing a terminal — without either party needing to push code or set up a branch.
1Installing Live Share
Search for Live Share (by Microsoft) in the Extensions view. Sign in with your GitHub or Microsoft account. The Live Share icon appears in the Activity Bar.
2Starting a Session
Click Share in the Activity Bar or Status Bar. A link is copied to your clipboard automatically. Share it with a collaborator — they can join in VS Code or a browser (via vscode.dev) without installing anything.
3Co-Editing & Following
Both participants can edit any file simultaneously — changes appear in real time with coloured cursors identifying each person. Click a collaborator's avatar to follow them — your editor scrolls to wherever they are working.
4Co-Debugging
The host shares their debug session. Guests see the same breakpoints, call stack, and variable inspector — and can step through the code. This makes debugging tricky distributed bugs with a colleague dramatically faster.
5Shared Terminals & Servers
The host can share a terminal (read-only or read-write) so both parties can run commands on the same machine. Forwarded ports let guests access the host's dev server on localhost in their own browser.