Visual Studio Code 1.132

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Release date: August 5, 2026

Downloads: Windows: x64 Arm64 | Mac: Universal Intel silicon | Linux: deb rpm tarball Arm snap


Welcome to the 1.132 release of Visual Studio Code. This release brings element-level feedback in the integrated browser, multilingual dictation, side chats, and Markdown diffs in the hybrid Markdown editor.

Happy Coding!


VS Code is rolling out gradually to all users. Use Check for Updates in VS Code to get the latest version immediately.

To try new features as soon as possible, download the nightly Insiders build, which includes the latest updates as soon as they are available.


Agents

Agent host

The agent host lets you connect to the same agent session from multiple VS Code windows. It runs agent harnesses such as Copilot, Claude, and Codex in a dedicated process based on the Agent Host Protocol (AHP). The agent host's Copilot agent is powered by the Copilot SDK, which aligns its behavior and functionality with the Copilot CLI, the standalone GitHub Copilot app, and other Copilot products.

We're actively developing the agent host and progressively rolling it out to users. The screenshot below shows how to select the Copilot harness on the agent host in the editor window:

Screenshot showing the harness dropdown in the editor window.

You can learn more in our VS Code Agent Host documentation. If you have any feedback or requests, please let us know by filing an issue.

Agents window

The Agents window gives you a dedicated space to start and monitor multiple agent sessions.

Track session activity from the chat input

When an agent works across files, subagents, previews, and browsers, you can use live status pills above the chat input to follow its progress and quickly return to related work. The pills update with the activity for the session you are viewing:

  • Changes summarizes the number of changes. Select it to view the changes for the current turn in a multi-file diff that updates live.
  • Previews provides access to Markdown previews for files the agent creates or edits.
  • Subagents lets you follow what the agent is doing in a subagent by opening its work in a separate chat.
  • Browsers lets you follow along while the agent interacts with an integrated browser.

Switch editor types

Setting: breadcrumbs.showEditorType Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders

When multiple editor types are available, an editor type dropdown in the Agents window shows the current editor and lets you switch between the available regular and diff editors instead of using the Reopen Editor With command. You can also change the default editor from the dropdown. The dropdown uses the right side of the breadcrumb bar, which also provides file navigation in the Agents window.

To show the editor type dropdown in editor windows, enable breadcrumbs.showEditorType Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders .

Side chats with /btw

When you want to ask a question without interrupting the current turn, you can open a side chat by typing /btw in the chat input. The side chat shares the context and prompt cache of your primary chat, so you can ask questions about the current turn. Similarly, you can select text in a chat response to ask contextual questions about that response.

You can also share context by referencing chats in other chats, either by dragging the chat tabs into the input box, or typing #chat: and then picking the title of the chat to include.

Chat

Terminal output reflow

Expanded terminal output in Chat reflows to the available width as the view is resized. Previously, output used a fixed width, which caused lines to wrap too early and left unused space in wider views.

This improvement applies to terminal output from both the Local agent harness and the Copilot harness running on the agent host.

Editor experience

Dictation onboarding and customization

Setting: agents.voice.language Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders

The built-in dictation converts speech to text in chat inputs, editors, and terminals. When you use dictation for the first time, an onboarding experience helps you verify the selected microphone before you start. It shows a live microphone waveform, provides a device picker when multiple microphones are available, and links to dictation settings and customization. You can reopen this experience with Voice Mode: Show Introduction from the Command Palette.

Screenshot showing the Dictation introduction with microphone selection and a live audio waveform.

Dictation now uses multilingual Nemotron 3.5 as its default on-device model. The model keeps audio on your device and follows agents.voice.language Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders . With automatic language selection, dictation uses your system or browser locale when supported and otherwise lets the model detect the language.

To adapt the final transcript to project terminology or formatting preferences, run Voice: Configure Dictation Instructions. VS Code combines instructions from ~/.copilot/dictation.md and .github/dictation.md in trusted workspaces. These instructions supplement the built-in cleanup rules, which preserve the meaning of your speech and prefer numerals where appropriate.

If network restrictions prevent the on-device model from downloading, the error notification provides an action to import an official Foundry Local model package from disk. During a normal first-use download, the microphone button shows progress instead of placing download text in the input.

Markdown diffs in the hybrid Markdown editor (Experimental)

In the previous release, we introduced the hybrid Markdown editor, which combines rendered Markdown with in-place editing and agent-actionable comments. In this release, Markdown diffs can open in the hybrid Markdown editor. The modified document remains editable, while gutter indicators highlight added, changed, and deleted content. You can use the editor type dropdown to switch between text diff and the Markdown editor with diff annotations.

Commenting in the integrated browser

To provide feedback on web pages, it is often useful to comment on specific elements. In this release, the integrated browser adds support for selecting web page elements and annotating them with agent feedback. You can trigger this mode by using the keyboard shortcut.

In this mode, you can select multiple elements and add a comment to each before sending to the chat.

Terminal

Better dictation for terminal commands

Terminal dictation applies shell-aware cleanup, so spoken commands preserve shell syntax. For example, saying "git commit dash m hello world" produces git commit -m "Hello World" instead of inserting the words literally.

Select the active microphone button to stop recording.

Proposed APIs

Configure custom editor priorities by editor mode

The proposed customEditors.priority feature lets extensions choose different priorities for text and diff editors. For example, an extension can use its custom editor by default for regular files while keeping the built-in editor as the default for diffs and vice versa.

Existing single priority values continue to work, and diff editors use explicit by default. Extension authors can learn more about configuring custom editor priorities. We plan to promote this feature to stable in the next release.

Deprecated features and settings

New deprecations in this release

  • Agent host policy

    The ChatAgentHostEnabled policy is removed, so administrators can no longer centrally disable the agent host through policy. Developers can continue to use chat.agentHost.enabled Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders to choose whether agents run in the separate agent host process.

Upcoming deprecations

There are no upcoming deprecations.

Thank you

Contributions to vscode:

Issue tracking

Contributions to our issue tracking:


We really appreciate people trying our new features as soon as they are ready, so check back here often and learn what's new.

If you'd like to read release notes for previous VS Code versions, go to Updates on code.visualstudio.com.