When opening files with external app, how to open them in the same IDE instance?

I managed to fix my problem. It is simple, You have to add the following setting in your User Settings file:

"window.openFilesInNewWindow": "on"

So for this to work, you have to set its boolean value to false. e.g "window.openFilesInNewWindow": "off"

Go to Preferences - User Settings , and this will automatically open the settings.json file for You.

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VSCode - version 1.32.3

Disable Editor Preview mode by:

File -> Preferences -> Settings -> Editor Management ->

  1. Enable Preview (uncheck)

  2. Enable Preview From Quick Open (uncheck)

From Visual Studio Code documentation:

When you single-click or select a file in the Explorer, it is shown in a preview mode and reuses an existing Tab.

If you'd prefer to not use preview mode and always create a new Tab, you can control the behavior with these settings:

workbench.editor.enablePreview to globally enable or disable preview editors workbench.editor.enablePreviewFromQuickOpen to enable or disable preview editors when opened from Quick Open

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/userinterface#_preview-mode