How do I disable telemetry for all users in Visual Studio Code?

Question

I need to disable telemetry for Visual Studio code for all users. I have packaged the product in SCCM (specifically so its installed under the users profile so they can update it themselves).

I can't however figure out how to disable telemetry for all users.

I know individually the following needs to be added under the user's settings

{
"telemetry.enableCrashReporter": false,
"telemetry.enableTelemetry": false
}    

Penneypenni

I don't know about the visual studio side of the thing but with sccm you could theoretically deploy the individual settings for every user that logs into the computer. Would not really recommend it because such things are always a little wonky in case you ever have to debug but if noone knows a solution that just allows global settings with vs code I could write you an answer explaining that part. – Barrage

Answer 1

Telemetry and data collection cannot be disabled in VSCode and the provided options to disable it is a red herring, see this answer for details. Essentially this is the same situation as with Windows 10 because, well, Microsoft.

As an alternative, you can use VSCodium but bear in mind 2 things:

1. Some extensions won't work.
2. Even if you hack them into work - they won't work properly or reliably (C# extension, for example, crashes, produces wrong results, etc.).

Barbel

Answer 2

Since VSC is OpenSource, somebody took already care of that and provides a fork without telemetry: https://vscodium.com/

Grocery

Answer 3

There is now a "How to disable telemetry reporting" section in official VS Code docs:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting

If you don't want to send usage data to Microsoft, you can set the telemetry.telemetryLevel user setting to off.

From File > Preferences > Settings, search for telemetry, and set the Telemetry: Telemetry Level setting to off. This will silence all telemetry events from VS Code going forward.

Important Notice: VS Code gives you the option to install Microsoft and third party extensions. These extensions may be collecting their own usage data and are not controlled by the telemetry.telemetryLevel setting. Consult the specific extension's documentation to learn about its telemetry reporting.

Knickerbockers

Answer 4

The official VS Code source code repository doesn't have telemetry by default also except the released builds. Releases are based on the same source code, add telemetry, and publish.

Here's how it works. When you build from the vscode repository, you can configure the resulting tool by customizing the product.json file. This file controls things like the Gallery endpoints, “Send-a-Smile” endpoints, telemetry endpoints, logos, names, and more.

When we build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license.

When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license (note, i made this commit to help make this more clear).
Source

Related: telemetryUtils.ts#L134

Bagel