I am the user (not the developer) of a Visual Studio 2022 extension which correctly uses the built-in WritableSettingsStore to store its settings (I verified this by looking at the extension's source code).
After extensively playing around with the extension's settings, I would like to restore it to its original state. Uninstalling and reinstalling didn't help, my modified settings were retained. I also don't want to reset all my Visual Studio settings or remove my complete user profile, I just want to reset this one extension.
Hence my question:
Where does the WritableSettingsStore physically store a Visual Studio Extensions's settings?
It's stored in the same place where Visual Studio stores its own settings: in Visual Studio's private registry hive.
Open the private registry hive with regedit.exe as described in the following question. Note: The correct path for Visual Studio 2022 is %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\17.0_71c0f998\privateregistry.bin.
The extension's settings are stored in the subkey Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\17.0_71c0f998\NameOfTheExtension. Remove that key to reset the extension to its default settings.
Don't forget to unload the hive as explained in the link in step 1.