How to Install Tailwind CSS in Visual Studio Code

In this tutorial, I will going to show you “how to install and configure Tailwind CSS in VS code”.

First you need to install, Node JS & npm on your computer.

Open VS editor.

Step 1: Open your project folder in VS code Terminal and  type the following code to create  a package.json file.

npm init

Step 2:  Now install Tailwind CSS via NPM.

npm install -D tailwindcss

Step 3: Create Tailwind CSS config file using the following command

npx tailwindcss init

Step 4 : Now open tailwind.config.js file and add your html file using the following line.

content: ["*"]

Step 5 : Create a “src” folder -> input.css file.  Then add the following lines (Tailwind directives) inside the file.

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Step 6 : Run the following command in VS Terminal to create output.css file with parent folder named “dist”,

npx tailwindcss -i ./src/input.css -o ./dist/output.css --watch

Note: The browser TailwindCSS preview output only works when you run “npx tailwindcss -i ./src/input.css -o ./dist/output.css –watch” command.

Step 7: Now Link your output css file in index.html file

<link href = "./dist/output.css" rel = "stylesheet" />

That's all.

Now add your Tailwind CSS tags and preview your output in local host server via VS code -> Run -> Start Debugging.

Finally install Tailwind CSS IntelliSense Extension in VS Code. To associate CSS file for tailwind extension  press F1 key and choose settings.

Change file associal settings like

"files.associations": {
"*.css": "tailwindcss"
}

That's all. Now your Tailwind CSS setup full ready to go.