01 Setup nRF Connect SDK with VSCode

Author: Tony Fu
Date: 2025/04/26
Device: nRF52840 DK
Toolchain: nRF Connect SDK v3.0.0

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Setup nRF Connect SDK with VSCode

I would recommend this tutorial series for setting up the nRF Connect SDK with VSCode.

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nrfutil

To my suprise, the VSCode extension (and the toolchain that it install) did not include the nrfutil package. This is required for flashing the firmware. Without it, the "flash" action button of the VSCode extension will not work.

Simply head to this website and download the latest version of nrfutil. Then add it to your PATH. Open a terminal and run the following command to see what commands are available:

nrfutil search

You should see something like this:

Command           Installed Latest Status
91                          0.5.0  Not installed
ble-sniffer                 0.16.2 Not installed
completion                  1.5.0  Not installed
device                      2.9.0  Not installed
npm                         0.3.0  Not installed
nrf5sdk-tools     1.1.0     1.1.0  Installed
sdk-manager                 1.1.0  Not installed
suit                        0.9.0  Not installed
toolchain-manager           0.15.0 Not installed
trace                       3.3.1  Not installed

You should install the device command. This is required for flashing the firmware. To install it, run the following command:

nrfutil install device