I don't see Home when I download PlatformIO

I have constantly run into this problem of not seeing the Home icon in PlatformIO after the extension is installed in VSC. The IDE shows up as Globally Installed, but I am just trying to simply load an Arduino sketch and can’t! Any suggestions? I have reinstalled VSC, PlatformIO, etc. Running MacOS 10.14.6 Mojave.

What are you referring to as the ‘Home icon’?

This icon on the status bar?

image

or the PIO icon in the sidebar?

image

If it’s the former, possibly it’s not there because you don’t have a PIO project open? The sidebar icon should always be present though.

The status bar icon is missing. I have the side bar icon. Is that normal? My confusion is opening an Arduino sketch as I was to.d to navigate to the Home icon and then Import. I never saw an Import option. What qualifies as a PIO project? I am new to VSCODE.

The image below illustrates my frustration. There is no “HOME” icon in either the sidebar or toolbar. What am I doing wrong? I am suspecting that I need to launch it in order to upload an Arduino sketch. Any help? Thanks.

What extensions are installed besides PlatformIO? What exact VScode version are you using? Do you have any antivirus active?

No other extensions are enabled
Running VSC Version: 1.39.1
No antivirus employed
Running MacOSX Mojave

Unless it went missing between you saying that, and the screenshot - you don’t… there’s no ‘alien head’ icon in the sidebar on the screenshot. And even if you don’t have a PIO project open (a project folder containing a platformio.ini configuration file and source code, etc), it seems that the home icon usually stays present on the status bar… but not other other icons. The rest of them should appear once you have a valid PIO (PlatformIO) project loaded.

I would temporarily disable all the other extensions, restart VSCode, and see if you get the sidebar icon, and the status bar icon. Then you can start turning on extensions one by one with a restart of VSCode between each to see which one is causing a conflict.

You should see both of these icons… but if you only get the side-bar icon… you can access PIO Home via the ‘quick access’ panel it offers after clicking on it. Either way, when you do get PIO Home open, you’ll see the ‘Import Arduino Project’ button on the right side… just need to get you there! :wink:
image

Maybe my problem is in not having a “valid PIO (PlatformIO) project loaded”. Seems like the structure of a program might need to be an Arduino sketch+PlatformIO.ini within the same folder? Is that correct?

That would only stop the other icons from being present, not the ones I’ve highlighted… they were present with NO project open. After importing an Arduino sketch, or opening a folder with an existing project, the rest of the status bar icons are added, and there is more stuff available under the sidebar icon’s panel also.

What extensions do you actually have installed? And did you restart VSCode so that the rest of PlatformIO was installed? You could try uninstalling the extension, and letting it re-install, and restart VSCode when prompted.

OK, I’ll walk myself through it. Thanks.

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