# VS Code: use language-specific settings

> Learn how to set language-specific settings in VS Code, like a different tab size for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Go, using per-language settings blocks.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2017-08-19 | Updated: 2018-05-28 | Topics: [DevTools](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/devtool/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/vscode-language-specific-settings/

With VS Code you have the ability to customize your spaces vs tabs preference, like in any editor, and also the option to choose how many spaces should a tab take.

Different languages however might require different settings.

For example I like to have 4 spaces in HTML, but only 2 in CSS and [JavaScript](https://flaviocopes.com/javascript/).

Go on the other hand wants 8 spaces.

How to deal with this?

You can add language-specific settings into the VS Code preferences file (opened with `cmd+,`).

This is an example that uses different settings for JS, CSS, HTML and Go files:

```js
"[javascript]": {
    "editor.insertSpaces": true,
    "editor.tabSize": 2
},
"[css]": {
    "editor.insertSpaces": true,
    "editor.tabSize": 2
},
"[html]": {
    "editor.insertSpaces": true,
    "editor.tabSize": 4
},
"[go]": {
    "editor.insertSpaces": false,
    "editor.tabSize": 8
}
```