Summary

This exploration will aim to support syncing you settings, extensions, keybindings, and snippets across multiple machines (local and remote) using a sign in service (account). The problem being addressed is that users don't have an easy way to sync these settings and have to rely on third party extensions. The primary scenarios we're looking to address are:

• Support syncing settings/extensions/keybindings/snippets automatically or manually
• Support for overwriting local/remote settings
• Resolving merge conflicts between local/remote settings
• Support for having machine only settings (OS specific)
• Support for removing extensions from your "account"

Related Issues

• Provide support to synchronize settings across machines Provide support to synchronize settings across machines  #2743
• Syncing local and remote Syncing local and remote vscode-remote-release#196
• Allow to scope settings by platform Allow to scope settings by platform #5595

Current Experience

Users have to rely on third-party extensions (like Settings Sync) to have syncing across machines. For remote scenarios, users have to manually install extensions on those machines (see below).