🐛 Unable to find the Biome binary.

[Profesor08]

VS Code version

1.105.0-insider

Extension version

3.2.0

Biome version

2.1.2

Operating system

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux

Description

Biome stops working

Steps to reproduce

It happens randomly, it just stops at some time.

Expected behavior

Always to work

Does this issue occur when using the CLI directly?

Not sure / Not applicable

Link to a minimal reproduction

No response

Logs

2025-10-09 00:30:10.708 [info]  🔒 Started listening for lockfile changes.
2025-10-09 00:30:10.708 [info]  ⚙️ Started listening for extension settings changes.
2025-10-09 00:30:10.708 [error] Unable to find the Biome binary.

[github-actions]

Hello @Profesor08, please provide a minimal reproduction. You can use one of the following options:

• Provide a link to our playground, if it's applicable.
• Provide a link to a GitHub repository. To easily create a reproduction, you can use our interactive CLI via npm create @biomejs/biome-reproduction

Issues marked with Needs reproduction will be closed if they have no activity within 3 days.

[glass-ships]

Despite multiple similar issues that keep getting closed, this problem seems to keep coming up for a number of users.

I can confirm this is still happening with the latest versions of biome and the official VSCode extension. Note that I am using bun as my package manager, so it's possible that the biome extension just doesn't want to play nicely with package managers other than npm, but that seems less than ideal.

I've noticed it does seem to work if node_modules/ exists at the top level of the current workspace, but if it is nested, for example:

.
└── my-project/
    ├── node_modules/
    ├── src/
    │   └── main.tsx
    ├── index.html
    ├── package.json
    └── vite.config.ts

then the extension will output:

2025-10-09 13:04:28.995 [info]  🔒 Started listening for lockfile changes.
2025-10-09 13:04:28.995 [info]  ⚙️ Started listening for extension settings changes.
2025-10-09 13:04:28.995 [warning] 🔍 Could not find global Node Modules path for npm
2025-10-09 13:04:29.119 [error] Unable to find the Biome binary.

Rather than forcing the user to change package managers (not always an option), or globally install biome (they may not want to for various reasons), some viable solutions might be to either:

• ship the extension with its own biome executable to use as a fallback, or
• attempt to traverse the workspace recursively to look for a node_modules/ directory rather than giving up at the first possible moment

[nhedger]

You can already specify the path to a binary using biome.lsp.bin if it's in a non standard location.

As for scanning for node modules, we already kinda do but up from the root of the workspace folder root. It's tricky to go looking for Biome in subfolders because we may find multiple versions and we wouldn't know which to use. By relying on the one a the root, it's easier to choose correctly.

If you project is in a subfolder as illustrated, you may consider creating a multi root workspace and set your subfolder as a workspace folder. Alternatively, point biome.lsp.bin to the binary in the node modules folder in your subfolder.

This isn't a limitation of package managers, but the strategy we use to locate the binary.

[glass-ships]

i will say that having to restructure our projects, using different workspaces, or configure biome.lsp.bin for each project which may have a different structure are all understandable but less than ideal short term solutions that may dissuade users, especially ones coming from a prettier/eslint configuration where those extensions do seem to simple work "out of the box" as it were.

additionally, if i create a .vscode/settings.json file and set it up with:

{
  "biome.lsp.bin": "my_project/node_modules/@biomejs/biome/bin/biome",
}

the extension then outputs that:

2025-10-09 13:33:13.255 [warning] 🔍 Could not determine the version of Biome binary at "/home/ge2/dev/biome-issue/my_project/node_modules/@biomejs/biome/bin/biome"
2025-10-09 13:33:13.255 [error] Failed to start the session

despite pinning to 2.2.5 in package.json, so even that is not (at least currently) a foolproof solution

[nhedger]

Try referencing the binary in the @biomejs/cli-* package instead.

I appreciate the workaround is not the best. If someone is willing to contribute changes that would cover this use case while retaining the existing functionality, I encourage anyone to start a discussion thread where we could brainstorm this

[Profesor08]

I don't know how to reproduce my case, it just happens from time to time. Restarting vscode helps. May be it happens after PC is waked up after hybernation.

[glass-ships]

thanks for the cli-* suggestion, that did seem to work, which will be a decent enough workaround for now. it does still complain about certain filetypes like "JSON with comments" but I may be able to get around that with vscode file associations in general.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically closed because it has been inactive for more than 3 days and it does not have a minimal reproduction.