Visual Studio Code – VSCode debugger for nodeJS stopped working recently

Debugger on VSCode for NodeJS stopped working today. It was working fine until late last week.

I couldn’t directly upload the gif on StackOverflow (apparently the image is above the size limit) you can refer to the gif in the following link:

I recorded a short video (in .gif format) of what happens when I try to start debugging. The video shows that when running debugger, it launches, the debug buttons show up for a moment then shuts down with no error messages.

I’ve upgraded my VSCode from 1.94.0 to 1.95.2 late last week so I tried reinstalling the old version (1.94.0) but the same issue occurs.

The node version I am using is v23.2.0 and npm version is 10.9.0.

I’ve tried turning on "trace": true in launch.json and couldn’t find any major issues or reasons as to why debug didn’t run:

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{"tag":"dap.send","timestamp":1731889683836,"metadata":{"connectionId":6,"message":{"seq":2,"type":"event","event":"initialized","body":{}}},"level":0}
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{"tag":"runtime.launch","timestamp":1731889683923,"message":"Using binary at","metadata":{"location":"C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe","executable":"node"},"level":1}
{"tag":"runtime.launch","timestamp":1731889683972,"message":"Discovered version","metadata":{"version":"v23.2.0"},"level":1}
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{"tag":"runtime.launch","timestamp":1731889684045,"message":"Launched successfully","metadata":{"name":"Yl"},"level":1}
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{"tag":"dap.send","timestamp":1731889684160,"metadata":{"connectionId":6,"message":{"seq":12,"type":"event","event":"terminated","body":{"restart":false}}},"level":0}
{"tag":"dap.receive","timestamp":1731889684163,"metadata":{"connectionId":6,"message":{"command":"disconnect","arguments":{"restart":false,"terminateDebuggee":false},"type":"request","seq":8}},"level":0}
{"tag":"dap.send","timestamp":1731889684163,"metadata":{"connectionId":6,"message":{"seq":13,"type":"response","request_seq":8,"command":"disconnect","success":true,"body":{}}},"level":0}

My launch.json file is as follows:

{
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Program",
            "skipFiles": [
                "<node_internals>/**"
            ],
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}\app.js",
            "trace": true
        }
    ]
}