How to add a dedicated Rosetta Terminal Profile inside Visual Studio Code on an M1 Mac

Why do this?

Many programs and packages still do not support the ARM architecture used on the new Apple M1 chip. If you are a developer dealing with older codebases, you may have already had issues installing npm dependencies or running specific tools.

Luckily, Apple provides us with the Rosetta emulation layer. It enables us to emulate the x86 architecture to run all the programs made for older Macs, with a little performance decrease when compared to apps optimized for M1.

Rosetta Terminal

When installing build tools like CocoaPods, you have to run your whole terminal session with Rosetta enabled.

A prevalent practice to achieve this is to create a copy of the Terminal.app, click “Get Info” and enable the flag “Open using Rosetta”. Now you have a second terminal that is always running as Rosetta.

How to do this in VSCode

I very much enjoy using the integrated Terminal in VSCode because I don’t have to switch windows so often and can continue coding while running processes like building my app or installing dependencies.

How to create a custom terminal profile:

• Open Visual Studio Code

• Use cmd+shift+p to open the Command Palette.

• Type “Open Settings (JSON)” and press enter

• In the settings.json file, search for the property terminal.integrated.profiles.osx, it should look similar to this:

  "terminal.integrated.profiles.osx": {
      "bash": {
      "path": "bash",
      "args": ["-l"],
      "icon": "terminal-bash"
      },
      "zsh": {
      "path": "zsh",
      "args": ["-l"]
      },
      "fish": {
      "path": "fish",
      "args": ["-l"]
      },
      "tmux": {
      "path": "tmux",
      "icon": "terminal-tmux"
      },
      "pwsh": {
      "path": "pwsh",
      "icon": "terminal-powershell"
      }
  }

• Add this property:

  "terminal.integrated.profiles.osx": {
   ....,
    "rosetta": {
      "path": "arch",
      "args": ["-x86_64", "zsh", "-l"],
      "overrideName": true
    }
  }

• Save the file

Tada! You now have a dedicated rosetta Terminal profile in VSCode

Click the dropdown arrow at the right side of your VSCode terminal. You should see the option “rosetta”.

If it doesn’t work or you have anything else you want to tell me, feel free to hit me up anytime on Twitter.