VSCodium vs Visual Studio Code

What is VSCodium?

VSCodium is the community build of Visual Studio Code that ships without Microsoft telemetry. As of 9 August 2026 Homebrew casks and GitHub Releases track the 1.126 line, usually a day or two behind Microsoft stable. The Monaco editor, extension host, debugger, integrated terminal and Git UI are the same as stock VS Code because the core is identical. What changes is packaging. There are no Microsoft telemetry endpoints compiled in, the binaries are MIT licensed, the default registry is Open VSX instead of the Visual Studio Marketplace, and the branding is neutral. You can still use AI through Continue, local models via Ollama or LM Studio, Muse Spark API keys or manual .vsix installs where the license allows, but GitHub Copilot and several Microsoft-only extensions stay Marketplace-locked by design. On macOS you install through Homebrew with brew install --cask vscodium or from a DMG on GitHub Releases, and it runs natively on Apple Silicon. When people ask whether VSCodium is "just VS Code without Microsoft," the accurate reply is yes for editing features and no for ecosystem glue. Extensions that Microsoft ships only through the Visual Studio Marketplace will not appear in Open VSX. Remote Development packs, Live Share, and C# Dev Kit are the usual blockers for enterprise teams. Privacy teams still prefer the fork because telemetry endpoints are absent from the build, not merely toggled off in settings. If your Mac is managed and you need a signed DMG path without a Microsoft account prompt on first launch, VSCodium fits.