news
New features in Copilot AI in Visual Studio Code update
The latest update to Visual Studio Code includes many new features and improvements for GitHub Copilot AI.
The original “AI Pair Programmers” provides AI-assisted development in two VS Code extensions (GitHub Copilot and GitHub Copilot Chat) that have been installed approximately 26 million times combined.
The latest VS Code update for April 2024 brings the hugely popular open source-based code editor to version 1.89, bringing several new features and improvements to Copilot AI, including inline chat in the terminal . This will be your default experience in Terminal and will run the following commands: Ctrl+I
The Copilot chat tool launches immediately, prompts the user how to do something with the CLI tool, and displays a microphone icon for voice interaction.
The VS Code team uses the sample prompt “List the top five largest files in the src directory” to demonstrate how the AI leverages contextual knowledge of the content within the unified shell to write commands that do just that. demonstrated that they can respond to
“When a command is suggested, use Ctrl+Enter
Run the command in terminal or Alt+Enter
“Inserts a command into the terminal,” the announcement post states. “Commands can also be edited directly within her Copilot response before execution (for now) Ctrl+down
, Tab
, Tab
On Windows and Linux, Cmd+down
, Tab
, Tab
(on macOS).
Other Copilot improvements include the ability to suggest new names for things like variables, and the ability for users to hide specific files from the AI.
- Rename suggestion button with Copilot: “You can now trigger CoPilot rename suggestions using the glow icon in the rename control.”
- Content exclusions: GitHub Copilot content exclusions are now supported in Copilot Chat for all Copilot for Business and Copilot Enterprise customers. Information about configuring content exclusions can be found in the GitHub documentation. Copilot Chat is the content or path of the file and will not be used to generate LLM suggestions.
Beyond AI, other improvements in the new update summarized by the development team include:
- Preview images and videos in Markdown — Preview images and videos in Markdown by hovering over the link. The team has improved the handling of renaming when Markdown files have duplicate headers.
- Branch Switching Enhancements — Seamlessly restore open editors when switching between branches: In response to a long-standing feature request, users now have settings adjusted to provide editor save and restore when switching between source control branches It is now possible.
- Middle-click paste support — Use middle-click of the mouse to quickly paste text into the terminal. Another setting enables the ability to replicate the standard Linux functionality of pasting clipboard contents when running on other OSes.
- Remote – WSL over SSH — Remote – Use WSL when connecting to a remote machine over SSH. The remote development extension allows you to take advantage of a variety of environments, including development containers, remote machines over SSH, remote tunnels, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). ), provides a comprehensive development experience that allows you to connect to WSL over SSH.
- Accessible View — Navigate through comments, chat code blocks, and terminal commands from Accessible View: Accessible View (accessible from)
Alt+F2
) is designed to help screen reader users explore the features of the workbench. Her three enhancements include:- Terminal improvements: When navigating between commands in the terminal's accessible view (use
Alt+Down
orAlt+Up
), the user is now asked if the current command has failed.Users can toggle this feature in settingsaccessibility.signals.terminalCommandFailed
. When you open an accessible view from a terminal with shell integration enabled, VS Code now provides a terminal command line that improves the experience. - Chat code block navigation: While in the accessible view of chat responses, users can navigate between (
Ctrl+Alt+PageDown
) and the previous (Ctrl+Alt+PageUp
) code block. - Comment view: If an extension that provides comments is installed, users can explore and navigate comments in the accessible view when the comment view has focus. Additionally, the actions provided by extensions available in comments can be performed from an accessible view.
- Terminal improvements: When navigating between commands in the terminal's accessible view (use
- Keyboard shortcuts for UI actions — Customize keybindings for UI actions directly with right-click: The team has improved the process for customizing keyboard shortcuts related to UI actions. Now, users can right-click any action item in the workbench and select[キーバインドのカスタマイズ]All you have to do is select. If the action has certain conditions (
when
clause), that condition is automatically included, making it easier to set up keybindings as wanetd while streamlining your development workflow. - Quick Search — Find text across your workspace using Quick Search: The ability to quickly perform text searches across workspace files is no longer experimental.
- Local Workspace Extensions — Include and install extensions directly into your workspace: First introduced in the VS Code 1.88 release, Local Workspace Extensions is now generally available to allow developers to include and install extensions directly into your workspace. , can now be installed only in that workspace. The team says this allows them to provide a more customized development experience while meeting the needs of a developer's specific workspace.
About the author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge360.