vscodium: Live Share's sign in does not work

Try logging in with your user code

Step 1: Go to this URL

Step 2: Login with microsoft account and copy the code.

Step 3: Open command palette in VSCodium and type user code. In the popup box, just enter the code.

This sould work in most cases

Temporary workaround: Copy the link from VSCodium login, replace vscodium: with vscode: If you still have a redirect error, copy the user code from the address bar and use it with the sign in with user code option (via Alt+P) on vscodium

One additional step to the comment from @Vrishtrix. To copy the code: click first on “Having trouble? Click here for user code directions”, (I was actually copying it from the url 🤦 ) The whole instructions are in: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/liveshare/use/vscode#sign-in-using-a-user-code

So just to elaborate on my part, when I change to vscodium: with vscode:, it asks for xdg-open to launch VSCodium, which I allow, but then allows as OP mentioned, it stays on Signing In.... For some reason it doesn’t seem to receive the call from the browser.

same here on Mac OS X 10.13

Microsoft isn’t going to address this bug because Live Share is a Microsoft product and you’re forbidden from using it in VSCodium (or anything that isn’t Microsoft VS Code).

The Live Share license agreement specifically states that it can only be used in Microsoft VS Code (section 1) and that you’re not allowed to work around this restriction by trying to mimic VS Code (section 5).

Additionally, you’re not allowed to install ANYTHING from the extension marketplace into a non-Microsoft product according to that site’s terms of use. See section 1b.

VSCodium is basically not at all welcome here and Microsoft should just tell you what I just did and close this bug as “WONT FIX”.

That said, you have a better option anyway.

Go install CodeTogether from the website or the Open VSX Marketplace and you’ll be able to live share from VSCodium or any other IDE based on the Code source (including VS Code). And you’ll be able to share between Eclipse-based and IntelliJ-based IDEs too. You’ll have freedom of choice to use any of your favorite IDEs and still live share your development sessions between them all. And yes, there is a totally zero cost plan because we all love free.

Disclaimer: CodeTogether is a product of Genuitec and I not only work there, I co-founded it over 20 years ago to build professional tools for other software developers. However, I’m posting here simply because y’all need to know the truth about why you’ll never see Microsoft support VSCodium and to welcome all y’all to our freedom of choice alternative.

So just to elaborate on my part, when I change to vscodium: with vscode:, it asks for xdg-open to launch VSCodium, which I allow, but then allows as OP mentioned, it stays on Signing In.... For some reason it doesn’t seem to receive the call from the browser.

@Avaq Do you really suggest to have VSCode installed next to VSCodium (possibly only for using Live Share)?

If anyone has a issue with that I guess that disabling the new “nativeAuth” as noted in https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/4130#issuecomment-786898008 should work to get to the old status.

It seems that since this change (https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/4128), the workarounds described here are no longer relevant, as the Live Share: Sign In With User Code option appears to have been removed. I found a new workaround:

1. From VSCode, click sign in with Github
2. Follow the login flow until the browser tries to open VSCode, reject that request
3. Copy the authentication token and paste it into an editor (the opened VSCode is fine)
4. From VSCodium, click sign in with GitHub
5. In the browser page that opens, find the state parameter in the URL, copy its value, you can close this page now
6. Replace the state parameter with this value in the authentication token you’ve acquired in step 3
7. Replace “vscode://” with “vscodium://” in the authentication token
8. In VSCodium click on the “Signing in with GitHub…” section in the status bar, and paste your modified token

The first time I tried this it failed, but I think the token is very short-lived. I tried it again by going through the steps much faster and the second time it worked.

@lodi-g I think @forward2k 's temporary workaround is as good as we can get here – since the extension/website assumes a “vscode:” protocol, manual intervention is needed to tell it about VSCodium. Will close this out for now.

Should we “promote” any alternatives, even proprietary ones? Or just focus on open source alternatives?

Could you simply list all of the alternatives and let the viewers decide what’s important to them? There are many cross-products between OSS, Free, Commercial, and Paid and everyone has different criteria they use to judge what they use.

In CodeTogether’s case, it’s a commercial product but there is a Free plan that you can use forever. But there are also a variety of paid plans because I have brilliant software developers that I enjoy paying to do great work and they appreciate being paid to do what they love to do.

Alright, workaround provided in https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/3218 works:

• go to https://insiders.liveshare.vsengsaas.visualstudio.com/auth/login and sign in with github
• click the user code link and copy the user code
• use the code in vscodium under the command Live Share: Sign In With User Code