Open files in VS Code and Cursor

VS Code and the editors built on it (Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium) open text files, images and some media. For Word, Excel, Parquet, SQLite, NetCDF, PDF and many other formats you need an extension. Each guide below gives the steps for VS Code and for Cursor, says what the extension can and cannot do, and names the other options.

Office files

• Open a .docx Word file in VS Code. VS Code shows a .docx as binary. Install a free viewer and the Word file opens as a read-only preview with search, outline and dark mode. Works in Cursor too.
• View a PowerPoint .pptx file in VS Code. Open .pptx and .ppt decks in VS Code with slide thumbnails, speaker notes, search and full-screen present. No LibreOffice, no upload. Free and offline.
• Read PDFs in dark mode in VS Code. Turn on dark pages for PDFs in VS Code without turning photos into negatives. Toggle per file or set it in settings. Works with LaTeX and Typst rebuilds.
• Open a PDF in Cursor. Cursor ships no PDF viewer. Install a free one from Open VSX to read PDFs with search, dark pages and highlights, then copy highlights as Markdown into chat.

Tables and data

• Open an Excel .xlsx file in VS Code. VS Code cannot show .xlsx files by itself. A free extension opens xlsx, xls and ods workbooks as a sortable, filterable table with the sheet picker and number formats.
• Open an Excel file in Cursor. Cursor gets extensions from Open VSX, not the VS Code Marketplace, so some Excel tools are missing. Table Viewer is there and opens xlsx, xls, ods, CSV and Parquet.
• See a CSV file as a table in VS Code. Three free ways to read CSV in VS Code: color the columns, edit in a grid, or open a read-only sortable table that handles 1,000,000 rows. Steps and honest limits.
• Open a Parquet file in VS Code. Open .parquet files in VS Code as a sortable table with column types and the full schema. No Python, pandas or kernel. Free, offline, also in Cursor via Open VSX.
• Open a SQLite database in VS Code. Open .db, .sqlite and .sqlite3 files in VS Code as tables, with the rows still in the WAL file, a schema tab and read-only SQL. Free, no paywall, also on Open VSX.

Science data

• A free NetCDF viewer that runs in VS Code. View .nc files on Windows, macOS or Linux: variable tree, header like ncdump -h, maps with coastlines, a time slider and point time series. No Python or NCL.
• Open an HDF5 (.h5) file in VS Code. Browse .h5 and .hdf5 groups and datasets in VS Code, with tables, heatmaps, stats and compressed filters, without h5py or Python. Free, also on Open VSX for Cursor.

Machine learning files

• View .npy and .npz NumPy files in VS Code. Open .npy and .npz arrays in VS Code: shape, dtype, stats, heatmaps, plots and images, without Python. Pickled object arrays are refused, not run.
• A safetensors viewer for VS Code. List every tensor in a .safetensors file with dtype and shape, then click one for stats and a heatmap. Reads only the header first. Also GGUF and PyTorch files.
• Open a .pkl pickle file in VS Code without running it. View .pkl and .pickle files in VS Code as a tree, NumPy arrays and pandas tables, without Python and without running the pickle. A Safety tab flags risky calls.
• View a JSONL file as a table in VS Code. Open .jsonl, .ndjson and .jsonl.gz files in VS Code as a table, a record tree or chat bubbles for fine-tuning data. Filter, sort and export. Files up to 4 GB.

3D and imaging

• View STL files in VS Code. Open STL, OBJ, PLY, 3MF, GLB and glTF models in VS Code. Orbit, measure distances, see wireframe and normals, and save a PNG. Free, offline, 344 KB.
• Open DICOM and NIfTI files in VS Code. View .dcm, DICOMDIR and NIfTI (.nii, .nii.gz) files in VS Code with CT window presets, axial, coronal and sagittal views, HU values and a tag table. Offline.

Developer files

• Read a HAR file offline in VS Code. HAR captures hold cookies and tokens. Open them offline in VS Code with a request table, timing waterfall and filters, and save a redacted copy before you share.
• Read your Claude Code history in VS Code. Claude Code keeps every session as a JSONL file. Browse them by project in VS Code, read each as a transcript with diffs and tokens, search all of them, and resume.

Media

• Why VS Code plays MP4 with no sound, and how to fix it. VS Code's built-in Chromium has the H.264 decoder but no AAC decoder, and most MP4 files use AAC. Here is how to get sound back, with or without an extension.

The extensions in these guides are free and open source, made by Zovo. See all of them.