Running Vscodium in Portable Mode with a Local data Folder

Desired outcome

Run Vscodium as a portable application so that all user‑specific files—settings, extensions, UI state—are stored in a data directory that lives next to the executable. The host user profile remains untouched.

Prerequisites

• A writable location where you can extract the Vscodium archive (e.g., a USB stick, a personal folder, or ~/apps).
• The Vscodium binary archive for your platform (download from github.com/VSCodium/vscodium).
• Read and write permission on the target folder.

Procedure

1. Extract the archive to the chosen location. For Linux/macOS:

   tar -xzf Vscodium-linux-x64.tar.gz -C /path/to/install
   

   For Windows, use a zip extractor to place the contents of Vscodium-win32-x64-1.90.0.zip into C:\tools\Vscodium (adjust the path as needed).
2. Inside the extracted folder, create an empty directory named data:

   mkdir -p /path/to/install/Vscodium-linux-x64/data
   

   On Windows:

   mkdir C:\tools\Vscodium\data
   

3. Launch Vscodium from that folder so it detects the data directory:
   • Linux/macOS: cd /path/to/install/Vscodium-linux-x64 && ./codium
   • Windows: double‑click Vscodium.exe or run C:\tools\Vscodium\Vscodium.exe from a command prompt.
   On first start Vscodium will populate data/User with default settings and data/extensions as extensions are installed.

Expected checks

• Open Settings (Ctrl+,) and change a visible option, for example set workbench.colorTheme to Default Dark+. Save and restart Vscodium.
• After restart, verify that the file data/User/settings.json contains the changed value:

  {
      "workbench.colorTheme": "Default Dark+"
  }
  

• Install an extension from the Open VSX marketplace (e.g., the esbenp.prettier-vscode extension) via the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X). Restart and confirm that a folder appears under data/extensions named something like esbenp.prettier-vscode-1.2.3 and that the extension is active.
• Launch Vscodium from a different directory (e.g., cd /tmp && /path/to/install/Vscodium-linux-x64/codium) and observe that it does **not** use the data folder you created; instead it falls back to the default user‑profile location.

Recovery options

• To reset to a clean state, rename or delete the data folder. On the next launch Vscodium will create a fresh data directory with default settings.
• To migrate an existing profile, copy the User folder from your current VS Code/Vscodium configuration (typically %APPDATA%\Code\User on Windows or $HOME/.config/VSCodium/User on Linux) into data/User, overwriting the existing content if desired.
• If you need to reinstall Vscodium while preserving your portable state, extract the new version to a new location, copy the existing data folder beside the new executable, and launch from there. Do not delete data unless you intend to lose the settings.

Note: Portable mode relies on the presence of the data folder at startup. Moving only the executable without its sibling data directory will cause Vscodium to revert to the default user‑profile location. Avoid placing data on slow network storage; extension host and cache operations can noticeably slow startup and responsiveness.