Beyond Arduino: Getting Started with ESP-IDF in VS Code for ESP32

Note: This tutorial was originally published on effessdev.github.io . Check out the original article for the most up-to-date version: https://effessdev.github.io/posts/2026-07-27/ This is a step-by-step tutorial that explains how you can set up your development environment for working with ESP-IDF projects in VS Code . Install ESP-IDF Install EIM Espressif Systems provides a graphical tool called EIM (ESP-IDF Installation Manager) to install ESP-IDF. Click the link below to go to the official page to download EIM: https://dl.espressif.com/dl/eim/ Make sure you are in the "Online Installer" tab. The exact file to download depends on your system: Windows: Download eim-gui-windows-x64.exe . Run this installer to install EIM. Linux x64 (Ubuntu): Download and install the .deb package ( eim-gui-linux-x64.deb ). Install ESP-IDF using EIM Now that we have installed EIM, let's install ESP-IDF using it. Open EIM. Under "New Installation" click "Start Installation". Under "Easy Installation", click "Start Easy Installation" to install the latest stable version of ESP-IDF with default settings. If there are no problems, you will see the "Ready to Install" page. Click "Start Installation". Install ESP-IDF VS Code Extension We use this extension as a high-level wrapper for ESP-IDF. Most times, we do not use ESP-IDF directly. For example, if we need to compile our source code, we ask the extension to do it, which uses the ESP-IDF we just installed internally to to compile the source code. Install the extension named "ESP-IDF" by "Espressif Systems" in VS Code. Verify installation After installing, restart VS Code. Use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + P to open the command palette (remember this shortcut, we are going to use it a lot). Inside the command palette, search ESP-IDF . You will see many entries which start with ESP-IDF: . Those commands are provided my the ESP-IDF extension. These commands are what we use for almost everything. Note If you are not in an ESP-IDF project, you m