Dev Tunnel for Remote Dev Environment

Published: October 24, 2025

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Sometimes when I am away from my desk, I still want to code. But that can be difficult on an iPad. I looked at a few ways I could code on my IPad - but I was unimpressed with most options (yeahhhh… I know… Maybe I should just stick to using the iPad for browsing/reading/watching-video). I decided to try a feature of VS Code named “Dev Tunnels”. Dev Tunnels allows you to connect to your remote machine, via an in-browser session of VS Code, and write and debug as if you were on that machine. I’ve outlined how I set it up. I installed Git, the GitHub CLI, the .NET SDK, VS Code, and then started the tunnel. That was it! The tunnel is stable and works remotely (when I’m not on my home network). It uses GitHub authentication and authorization - the process required me to sign in 3 times, and I’m fine with that, as long as it is all secure! Here are the steps I took to set everything up:

Update 11-5-2025: I’ve now written an article for doing this on Ubuntu.

Run all these commands on your Windows/host/remote machine:

Install Git:

winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget

Install the GitHub CLI:

winget install --id GitHub.cli

Restart the terminal so your PATH environment variables are up-to-date

Login to GitHub using the CLI:

gh auth login

Setup git user info:

git config --global user.name "John Doe"

git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

Install the .NET SDK:

winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.9

Install VS Code:

winget install vscode

Again, restart your terminal to ensure your PATH variables are up-to-date

Run Dev Tunnel:

code tunnel

Running this command will prompt you to sign in to GitHub and allow VS Code access to your GitHub account. Follow the instructions on the terminal to complete the authentication setup. On completing those steps you will be given a URL that you can open on your client machine (my iPad in my case). When you open the URL, you will be prompted to authenticate it GitHub - complete those steps.

Starting the tunnel can be repetitive. I wanted my tunnel to run as a service and always available. Setup Dev Tunnel as a service to start automatically at boot:

code tunnel service install

Later, if you want to remove the service, run:

code tunnel service uninstall

That’s all there is to it - a quick, practical way to keep a development environment reachable when you’re not home. Once you’ve installed Git, the GitHub CLI, the .NET SDK, and VS Code (tools you probably have installed already), running the Dev Tunnel is straightforward, and setting it up as a service keeps it available whenever you need it. Be mindful of account security (use MFA) and only enable automatic access on machines you trust. I’m going to try it out for a while and see how I like it. Happy coding!

Microsoft Documentation on Tunnels: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/tunnels