WebStorm on Linux — Datawords Hong Kong

WebStorm is a professional IDE by JetBrains for JavaScript and web development. It provides smart code completion, debugging, Git integration, and built-in tools for modern frameworks.

This guide covers installing WebStorm on Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) using either the official .tar.gz archive or the Snap package manager.

What you need: A personal email address (not your company email) to create a JetBrains account for activation

Choose one of the two installation methods below:

Method 1 — Download .tar.gz (recommended)

Go to jetbrains.com/webstorm/download and click Download to get the .tar.gz archive
Extract the archive to /opt/ (requires sudo)
Run the launcher script to start WebStorm
On first launch, use Tools → Create Desktop Entry to add WebStorm to your application menu

# Extract the downloaded archive (version number may differ)
$ sudo tar -xzf ~/Downloads/WebStorm-*.tar.gz -C /opt/
# Launch WebStorm
$ /opt/WebStorm-*/bin/webstorm.sh

Extracting WebStorm to /opt/ and launching via webstorm.sh

Method 2 — Snap

If your system has Snap installed (default on Ubuntu), run this single command in Terminal:

$ sudo snap install webstorm --classic

Snap downloads and installs WebStorm automatically

After installation, launch WebStorm from your application menu or run webstorm (snap) / /opt/WebStorm-*/bin/webstorm.sh (.tar.gz) in the terminal.