Run PowerShell no matter what

VS Code is pretty amazing. Having the ability to edit virtually all of your files, and launch debugging sessions of them. But what if you have a codebase that has a .vscode/launch.json file and want to debug a PowerShell script?

Unfortunately, by default, F5 will only debug PowerShell if there are no debugger configurations. This means that pressing F5 will attempt to run the configured debugger for your workspace regardless of if you’re in a PowerShell file.

Fear not! Although by default you’re not able to run PowerShell code with F5 when a debugger configuration exists, you are able to tell VS Code you want to do this!

Doing it through the GUI 🔗

If you’d like to add this through the VS Code GUI, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Keyboard Shortcuts UI (Ctrl + K, Ctrl + S by default, or search for Preferences: Keyboard Shortcuts with the Command Palette), then search for PowerShell: Run.
2. Locate and double click the entry for PowerShell: Run
3. Press F5 followed by Enter
4. Right click the entry and choose Change When Expression
5. Enter the following for the expression: editorTextFocus && debugState == 'inactive' && editorLangId == 'powershell'
6. Bask in the glory that is pressing F5 in a PowerShell script and always having it do what you expect it to do.

Doing it through the keybindings.json file 🔗

If you’d prefer to just copy/paste something into the settings files, you can add the below to your keybindings.json file:

[
    {
        "key": "f5",
        "command": "PowerShell.Debug.Start",
        "when": "editorTextFocus && debugState == 'inactive' && editorLangId == 'powershell'"
    }
]

You can locate your keybindings.json file through the Command Palette Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON).