Organising Work and Personal Development in VS Code

I wanted a clear way to move between work and personal projects on Ubuntu without repeatedly rearranging extensions and settings. VS Code provides several ways to do that, depending on how much separation you need.

The important detail is that editor settings, Git commit identity, and GitHub authentication are separate things. Choosing an editor profile does not automatically set the correct author email for a repository.

Option 1: Use profiles for different editor setups

Profiles are a convenient starting point when the main requirement is different settings, extensions, snippets, and layouts. Create a Work profile and a Personal profile through VS Code’s Profiles interface, then associate the appropriate folders with them.

You can also open a folder with a named profile from the command line:

code --new-window --profile Work /path/to/work-project
code --new-window --profile Personal /path/to/personal-project

This makes the workspace recognisable and avoids loading every extension in every project. Review Settings Sync separately if you use it, so you know which settings and profiles are synchronised.

Option 2: Use separate user data directories

For a more distinct editor configuration, launch the same VS Code installation with separate user data and extension directories:

code --new-window \
  --user-data-dir "$HOME/.vscode-work-data" \
  --extensions-dir "$HOME/.vscode-work-extensions" \
  /path/to/work-project

Use different paths for the personal setup. These directories isolate editor data and extension installations, but both processes still run as your operating system user. They can still access that user’s filesystem and Git configuration.

This is useful organisational separation, not an operating system security boundary.

Option 3: Run Stable and Insiders side by side

VS Code Stable and Insiders can coexist and use separate application data. Install them using the current official Linux instructions, then launch them with:

code /path/to/work-project
code-insiders /path/to/personal-project

Insiders receives preview changes. Use it when you want that release channel, rather than treating it as a requirement for maintaining two project contexts.

Configure Git identity in each repository

Inside the work repository:

git config user.name "Your Name"
git config user.email "work@example.com"
git config --show-origin --get user.email

Inside the personal repository, set the personal email instead. Repository level configuration is read by Git regardless of which editor opens the folder.

For separate GitHub credentials, configure the appropriate SSH keys or credential manager accounts as well. The two GitHub accounts guide covers that setup.

Choose the amount of separation you need

Before making a work commit, check the repository, remote, and author email. The editor can make the contexts easier to recognise; Git configuration and authentication determine how the change is recorded and pushed.

References

• VS Code profiles
• VS Code command line options