Documentation

Topics Overview Overview Agents Quickstart Editor Tutorial Intro Videos Overview Get started Agents Quickstart Agents Tutorial Best Practices Concepts Agents Agent Harnesses Language Models Context Tools Sessions & Handoff Agent Host Architecture Customization Workspace Context Trust & Safety Run agents Agents Window Chat View Choose an Agent Harness Use Tools Browser Tools Approvals & Permissions Review & Revert Changes Artifacts Remote Agent Sessions Plan Work Memory Subagents Sessions Manage Sessions Session History AI Security Customize agents Create and Manage Instructions Agent Skills Custom Agents Language Models MCP Hooks Plugins Tools Prompt Files Use chat Chat Basics Inline & Quick Chat Add Prompt Context Tutorials & guides Customize AI Context Engineering Test-Driven Development Test with AI Test Web Apps with Browser Tools Debug with AI Edit Notebooks with AI Optimize AI Credit Usage MCP Dev Guide Prompt Examples Reference Cheat Sheet Settings Reference MCP Configuration Hooks Reference OpenTelemetry Monitoring Troubleshooting Troubleshooting Debug Chat Interactions Diagnose Prompt Caching FAQ Editor Overview Quickstart Repositories & Remotes Staging & Committing Source Control History Branches & Worktrees Merge Conflicts Collaborate on GitHub Troubleshooting FAQ Get Started Terminal Basics Terminal Profiles Shell Integration Appearance Advanced Debugging Debug Configuration Tasks Testing Integrated Browser Port Forwarding Guides & Tutorials Test-Driven Development Test Web Apps with Browser Tools Overview Enterprise Policies AI Settings Extensions Telemetry Updates Overview VS Code for the Web SSH SSH Tutorial Tunnels Dev Containers WSL WSL Tutorial GitHub Codespaces VS Code Server Linux Prerequisites Tips and Tricks FAQ GitHub Copilot Setup Linux macOS Windows Raspberry Pi Network Portable Mode Additional Components Uninstall Languages & Runtimes Extension Docs

Language Identifiers

In Visual Studio Code, each language mode has a unique specific language identifier. That identifier is rarely seen by the user except in the settings, for example, when associating file extensions to a language:

    "languages": [{
        "id": "java",
        "extensions": [ ".java", ".jav" ],
        "aliases": [ "Java", "java" ]
    }]

Language supports are added using the language identifier:

languages.registerCompletionItemProvider('php', new PHPCompletionItemProvider(), '.', '$');

New identifier guidelines

When defining a new language identifier, use the following guidelines:

Use the lowercased programming language name.
Search for other extensions in the Marketplace to find out if a language identifier has already been used.

Known language identifiers

The following table lists known language identifiers:

Language	Identifier
Agent	`chatagent`
Batch	`bat`
BibTeX	`bibtex`
Binary	`code-text-binary`
C	`c`
C#	`csharp`
C++	`cpp`
Clojure	`clojure`
Code Snippets	`snippets`
CoffeeScript	`coffeescript`
Compose	`dockercompose`
CSS	`css`
CUDA C++	`cuda-cpp`
Dart	`dart`
Diff	`diff`
Docker	`dockerfile`
Dotenv	`dotenv`
F#	`fsharp`
Git Commit Message	`git-commit`
Git Rebase Message	`git-rebase`
Go	`go`
Groovy	`groovy`
Handlebars	`handlebars`
HLSL	`hlsl`
HTML	`html`
Ignore	`ignore`
Ini	`ini`
Instructions	`instructions`
Java	`java`
JavaScript	`javascript`
JavaScript JSX	`javascriptreact`
JSON	`json`
JSON Lines	`jsonl`
JSON with Comments	`jsonc`
Julia	`julia`
Julia Markdown	`juliamarkdown`
LaTeX	`latex`
Less	`less`
Log	`log`
Lua	`lua`
Makefile	`makefile`
Markdown	`markdown`
MS SQL	`sql`
Objective-C	`objective-c`
Objective-C++	`objective-cpp`
Perl	`perl`
PHP	`php`
Plain Text	`plaintext`
PowerShell	`powershell`
Prompt	`prompt`
Properties	`properties`
Pug	`jade`
Python	`python`
R	`r`
Raku	`raku`
Razor	`razor`
reStructuredText	`restructuredtext`
Ruby	`ruby`
Rust	`rust`
SCSS	`scss`
Search Result	`search-result`
ShaderLab	`shaderlab`
Shell Script	`shellscript`
Skill	`skill`
Swift	`swift`
TeX	`tex`
TypeScript	`typescript`
TypeScript JSX	`typescriptreact`
Visual Basic	`vb`
WebAssembly Text Format	`wat`
XML	`xml`
XSL	`xsl`
YAML	`yaml`

8/19/2026

Documentation

On this page there are 2 sectionsOn this page

Language Identifiers

New identifier guidelines

Known language identifiers

On this page there are 2 sections