Open files in VS Code and Cursor / Binary, network and hardware

A 010 Editor alternative inside VS Code

If you use 010 Editor to look at and patch binary files next to your code, Hex Viewer by Zovo does the daily part inside VS Code for free: files of any size, insert and delete, find with wildcards, a data inspector and a byte compare of two files. Templates for 20 formats, checksums, bookmarks and a compare report are Zovo Pro, USD 19 once. It is not a full replacement: 010 Editor has C-like templates and scripts, more than 330 formats, and disk and process editing.

Free, MIT license. Extension ID zovo.zovo-hex-viewer, version 0.3.7. Needs VS Code 1.90.0 or newer.

Steps in VS Code

1. Install Hex Viewer from the Marketplace, or press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on macOS) and run ext install zovo.zovo-hex-viewer.
2. Right-click a file and pick "Open in Hex Viewer". Ctrl+G (Cmd+G) goes to an offset such as 0x1F40, +0x100 or end-15.
3. Ctrl+F finds hex bytes with ?? wildcards, text or UTF-16. The data inspector reads the bytes at the cursor as 8 to 64-bit integers, floats, times, a GUID and characters.
4. Press Insert to switch between overwrite and insert. Delete, cut and paste work on any selection. Ctrl+S saves; if the size changed, a new copy is written and swapped in.
5. Select two files in the Explorer and pick "Compare in Hex Viewer". F7 goes to the next difference.
6. Open the Structure tab to read the file with a template, or use "Checksums..." under the data inspector (Zovo Pro, 3 free tries each).

Steps in Cursor, Windsurf or VSCodium

1. Open the Extensions view with Ctrl+Shift+X (Cmd+Shift+X on macOS).
2. Search for zovo.zovo-hex-viewer and click Install. Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium install from Open VSX, where it is published as zovo/zovo-hex-viewer.
3. If your editor has no gallery, download the .vsix from the Open VSX page and run "Extensions: Install from VSIX...".
4. Then use it the same way as in VS Code.

What Hex Viewer handles

• Large files: only the rows on screen are read. A 4 GB file opened in 0.6 s, and two 4 GB files were compared in 2.1 s.
• Editing with insert and delete, undo and redo, and a save that never leaves a half-written file.
• Copy as hex, C array, Python bytes, base64 or text.
• Works where VS Code works: Windows, macOS and Linux, Remote SSH and WSL (remote files up to 256 MB), and Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium through Open VSX.
• No telemetry and no network calls, except the one GitHub check when you choose to unlock Pro with GitHub Sponsors.

What it does not do

• No 010 Editor .bt templates and no scripting language. Hex Viewer templates are JSON data.
• 20 built-in formats, against more than 330 in the 010 Editor template repository.
• No disk, drive or process memory editing. It opens files.
• No histogram, no file-wide statistics, and no compare of structures field by field.

Free and Zovo Pro

Free, and staying free: opening files of any size, go to offset, find with ?? wildcards, copy as C, Python or base64, the data inspector, editing with insert, delete and undo, safe save, and the side-by-side compare of two files.

Zovo Pro adds these tools to Hex Viewer. Each one works 3 times on your computer before it asks for a license. Nothing about Pro shows when you open a file: no popup, no countdown, no banner.

• The Structure view: 20 built-in binary templates (PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, WAV, FLAC, MP4, ZIP, GZIP, TAR, PDF, SQLite, ELF, PE, Mach-O, Java class, PCAP and ICO), your own JSON templates, and export of a struct as JSON or as a C struct.
• Bookmarks with a name, a color and a note, saved per file, with Markdown export.
• Checksums of the selection or the whole file: CRC-32, Adler-32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512.
• A compare report: every differing range written to a text, CSV or JSON file.
• Find bytes or text in many files at once.

Zovo Pro costs USD 19 once. It is not a subscription, and one purchase covers every Zovo VS Code extension. Today it also covers the Pro tools in Postgres & MySQL Query Client and DOCX Viewer, and Pro tools added to other Zovo extensions later.

Two ways to unlock it:

1. GitHub Sponsors: pick the "$19 one time" tier. Then, in VS Code, click a Pro tool and pick "Unlock with GitHub Sponsors" (or type "GitHub Sponsors" in the Command Palette) and sign in with the same GitHub account. A monthly sponsorship of USD 10 or more that is still running counts too.
2. PayPal, no GitHub account needed: send USD 19 by PayPal with "Zovo Pro" in the note, then post the transaction ID with the Zovo Pro key form (a public GitHub issue, so post only the ID). The license key goes to the email address of your PayPal account within a day. Click a Pro tool and pick "I have a license key" (or type "license key" in the Command Palette) and paste it. The key is checked on your computer, with no network call.

A team of 5: USD 59 once by PayPal, with "Zovo Pro Team" in the note. Every rule and every Pro tool is on the Zovo Pro page.

In JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, CLion and others)

• Hex Viewer & Binary Viewer by Zovo. Our own JetBrains version. It was still waiting for JetBrains review on 9 November 2026, so the page may not offer an install yet, and it has no Structure view.
• BinEd - Binary/Hex Editor. A binary and hex editor plugin with 500,280 downloads. Use "Open In / Binary Editor" in the project files menu.
• Binary Template Support. Syntax highlighting and completion for 010 Editor .bt template files (49 downloads). It edits templates; it does not run them on a file.

Other options

• Hex Editor (Microsoft) (ms-vscode.hexeditor, 7.5 million installs, on Open VSX). The most installed hex editor for VS Code, free. Its own description: "Allows viewing and editing files in a hex editor". No templates and no two-file compare.
• HexDiff (sj0000e.hexdiff, 21,918 installs, not on Open VSX). Its own description: "Compare two binary files in hexadecimal mode". Not on Open VSX.
• 010 Editor. Version 17.0.1. USD 59.95 for home or academic use and USD 149.95 for commercial use (sweetscape.com, 9 November 2026). Keep it if you need its templates, scripts or drive editing.
• ImHex, HxD or Hex Fiend. Free desktop hex editors. ImHex (Windows, macOS, Linux) has a pattern language for file structures. HxD is for Windows and Hex Fiend for macOS.

Install counts and Open VSX status were checked on 9 November 2026. Descriptions in quotes are the extensions' own.

Questions

More about Hex Viewer

Read the Hex Viewer page for every feature and setting, or the source code on GitHub.

Related guides

• Hex Viewer & Binary Viewer on the VS Code Marketplace (also on Open VSX). Opens any file as hex, edits bytes and compares two files, even files of many GB.
• Use a hex editor in VS Code
• Open a binary file in VS Code
• Read binary files with templates in a VS Code hex editor
• Compare binary files in VS Code