Why VSCodium Did Not Pick Up My New Environment Variables

I was setting up a Flutter project on Windows. After running flutter doctor, I added the NO_PROXY variable and set CHROME_EXECUTABLE to point to the Chrome installation managed by Scoop.

I reopened the VSCodium terminal and ran flutter doctor again, but the warning was still there. I checked the variables in Git Bash and a separate Windows Terminal window; both could see them, so I thought I had configured them correctly.

I closed and reopened the integrated terminal, then restarted VSCodium. The variables were still missing from Flutter’s environment. Eventually I noticed that another VSCodium window was still running in the background. After closing every VSCodium window and launching it again, flutter doctor could see the new variables.

The key detail is that a process inherits its environment when it starts. Restarting an integrated terminal or opening another window may reuse an already-running VSCodium process, which still has the old environment. When an application cannot see a newly added Windows environment variable, fully exit the application (including background processes) and relaunch it before changing the variable again.