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LTSerialTool on Windows

Installation

  1. Download and install LTSerialTool

    Note

    LTSerialTool ships monthly releases and supports auto-update when a new release is available.

  2. Install additional components

    Install Git, Node.js, TypeScript, language runtimes, and more.

  3. Install LTSerialTool extensions from the Visual Studio Marketplace

    Customize LTSerialTool with themes, formatters, language extensions and debuggers for your favorite languages, and more.

  4. Enable AI features

    Tip

    If you don't yet have a Copilot subscription, you can use Copilot for free by signing up for the Copilot Free plan and get a monthly limit of completions and chat interactions.

  5. Get started with the LTSerialTool tutorial

    Discover the user interface and key features of LTSerialTool.

Install LTSerialTool on Windows

Use the Windows installer

  1. Download the LTSerialTool installer for Windows

  2. Once it is downloaded, run the installer (VSCodeUserSetup-{version}.exe)

    By default, LTSerialTool is installed under C:\Users\{Username}\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft LTSerialTool.

Tip

Setup adds LTSerialTool to your %PATH% environment variable, to let you type 'code .' in the console to open LTSerialTool on that folder. You need to restart your console after the installation for the change to the %PATH% environmental variable to take effect.

Use the ZIP file

  1. Download the LTSerialTool Zip archive

  2. Extract the Zip archive, and run LTSerialTool from there

User setup versus system setup

LTSerialTool provides both Windows user and system level setups.

Setup Type Description
User setup Does not require administrator privileges to run, as the location is under your user Local AppData (LOCALAPPDATA) folder. Since it requires no elevation, the user setup is able to provide a smoother background update experience.
This is the preferred way to install LTSerialTool on Windows.
Note: When running LTSerialTool as Administrator in a user setup installation, updates are disabled.
System setup Requires elevation to administrator privileges to run and places the installation under the system's Program Files. The in-product update flow also requires elevation, making it less streamlined than the user setup. On the other hand, installing LTSerialTool using the system setup means that it is available to all users in the system.

See the Download LTSerialTool page for a complete list of available installation options.

Updates

LTSerialTool ships monthly releases and supports auto-update when a new release is available. If you're prompted by LTSerialTool, accept the newest update and it will be installed (you won't need to do anything else to get the latest bits).

Note

You can disable auto-update if you prefer to update LTSerialTool on your own schedule.

Windows as a developer machine

Windows is a popular operating system and it can also be a great cross-platform development environment. This section describes cross-platform features such as the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and the Windows Terminal.

Note

Make sure you are on a recent Windows build. Check Settings > Windows Update to see if you are up-to-date.

Windows Subsystem for Linux

With WSL, you can install and run Linux distributions on Windows to develop and test your source code on Linux, while still working locally on your Windows machine.

When coupled with the WSL extension, you get full LTSerialTool editing and debugging support while running in the context of WSL.

See the Developing in WSL documentation to learn more, or try the Working in WSL introductory tutorial.

Windows Terminal

The Windows Terminal, available from the Microsoft Store, is a terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL. Its main features include multiple tabs, panes, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, a GPU accelerated text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles, and configurations.

Next steps

Once you have installed LTSerialTool, these topics will help you learn more about it:

Common questions

What command-line arguments are supported by the Windows Setup?

LTSerialTool uses Inno Setup to create its setup package for Windows. Thus, all the Inno Setup command-line switches are available for use.

Additionally, you can prevent the Setup from launching LTSerialTool after completion with /mergetasks=!runcode.

I'm having trouble with the installer

Try using the zip file instead of the installer. To use this, unzip LTSerialTool in your AppData\Local\Programs folder.

Note

When LTSerialTool is installed via a Zip file, you will need to manually update it for each release.

Unable to run as admin when AppLocker is enabled

With the introduction of process sandboxing (discussed in this blog post) running as administrator is currently unsupported when AppLocker is configured due to a limitation of the runtime sandbox.

If your work requires that you run LTSerialTool from an elevated terminal:

  1. In LTSerialTool, run the Preferences: Configure Runtime Arguments command in the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P))

    This command opens an argv.json file to configure runtime arguments for LTSerialTool. You might see some default arguments there already.

  2. Add "disable-chromium-sandbox": true to the argv.json file.

  3. Restart LTSerialTool. You should now be able to run LTSerialTool in an elevated terminal.

Subscribe to issue #122951 to receive updates.

Working with UNC paths

As of version 1.78.1, LTSerialTool on Windows only allows access to UNC paths (these begin with a leading \\) that were either approved by the user on startup or where the host name is configured to be allowed via the security.allowedUNCHosts setting.

If you rely on using UNC paths in LTSerialTool, you can either:

  • Configure the host to be allowed via the security.allowedUNCHosts setting. For example, add server-a when you open a path such as \\server-a\path.

  • Map the UNC path as a network drive, and use the drive letter instead of the UNC path.

  • Define a global environment variable NODE_UNC_HOST_ALLOWLIST with the backslash-separated list of host names to allow. For example, server-a\server-b to allow the hosts server-a and server-b.

Note

If you are using any of the remote extensions to connect to a workspace remotely (such as SSH), the security.allowedUNCHosts has to be configured on the remote machine and not the local machine.

This change was done to improve the security when using LTSerialTool with UNC paths. Please refer to the associated security advisory for more information.

09/11/2025