The ExtendScript Toolkit¶
Warning
The Extendscript Toolkit has been deprecated in favour of The VS Code Debugger!
This information is preserved here for legacy reference, but the Extendscript Toolkit is no longer being actively maintained or supported, and will no longer work on 64-bit-only versions of MacOS.
The ExtendScript Toolkit provides an interactive development and testing environment for ExtendScript in all JavaScript-enabled Adobe applications.
It includes a full-featured, syntax-highlighting text editor with Unicode capabilities and multiple undo/redo support. The Toolkit is the default editor for ExtendScript files, which use the extension .jsx.
The Toolkit includes a JavaScript debugger that allows you to:
Single-step through JavaScript scripts (JS or JSX files) inside an application.
Inspect all data for a running script.
Set and execute breakpoints.
When you double click a JSX file in the platform’s windowing environment, the script runs in the Toolkit, unless it specifies a particular target application using the #target directive.
For more information, see Selecting a debugging target and Preprocessor directives.
Tip
When you have completed editing and debugging your JavaScript script, you can choose to save it as a binary file (with the extension JSXBIN), using File > Export as Binary.
The script loader recognizes both source code and compiled code. Photoshop and After Effects can execute compiled scripts.
If an application recognizes the execution of compiled JavaScript, it lists JSXBIN files along with JSX files in any list of available scripts.