Opening VSIX Files

The VSIX file type is primarily associated with Visual Studio.

VSIX	File extension: VSIX
	File type:	extension

What is a VSIX file?

VSIX files mostly belong to Visual Studio by Microsoft. A VSIX file contains one or more extensions (plugins) downloaded and used by Visual Studio integrated development environment. The file is actually a compressed ZIP archive containing metadata (XML), localized setup text (VSIXLANGPACK), and dependencies for each extension in a VSIX package. The contents of a Visual Studio extension are structured and saved in line with the Open Packaging Convention. The XML encoded manifest in a VSIX file contains the schema and information required to install and run one or more plugins.

How to open VSIX files

You need a suitable software like Visual Studio from Microsoft to open a VSIX file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your VSIX file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a VSIX file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online VSIX Text Viewer

Choose your .vsix file to analyze

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

✈

Read our privacy guarantee in Filext’s terms and privacy policy

Please allow ads on our site

This helps us keep our servers running. Then re-upload your file to view it.

Click here to see how to disable the ad blocker for filext.com

VSIX format details:

Why is it important to know the file format? This is the only way to find out which program to use to open the file. The file format can be deduced from the file extension and the signature. Frequently, however, one file extension is used by different programs for different file formats, and one file format for different file extensions. So you need a detailed analysis of a file to find out the format and the associated program. Our analysis of the VSIX files produces the following result:

The VSIX file ending mainly uses a defined VSIX format. But the following two file formats are common:

• 98% of all VSIX files use the ZIP algorithm, the VSIX file contains a number of compressed files. The 9 to 180 compressed files are called [Content_Types].xml and extension.vsixmanifest. If you'd like to see the images and files included, just rename the file extension to .zip and double-click. The average file size is 1 MB with most files being between 49 KB and 25 MB in size. The following keywords are characteristic: extension.vsixmanifest. Files like these are about bpmapstest, python, vscode, extension, registration, azureadapp, code and installer.

All other VSIX files (2%) have no uniform format. Often described as studio, sonar, data, lint, provisioning, microsoft or projects. Just click the "Choose your .vsix file to analyze" button on this page to find out what your VSIX file is.