June 2025 (version 1.102)

Brief Summary

The June 2025 release of Visual Studio Code includes several key updates and improvements:

• GitHub Copilot Chat: The GitHub Copilot Chat extension is now open source, allowing community contributions and customization.
• MCP Support: MCP (Managed Configuration Protocol) support is generally available, with enhanced management and integration features.
• Editor Experience: Improvements include Copilot coding agent task delegation, middle-click scrolling, and snooze code completions.
• Terminal: Terminal auto approval, command simplification, and agent awareness of tasks and terminals.
• GitHub Pull Requests: Deeper integration between the GitHub Pull Requests extension and Copilot coding agent.
• Python: Python Environments extension improvements and integration as an optional dependency with the Python extension.

June 2025 Release of Visual Studio Code

The June 2025 release of Visual Studio Code introduces numerous updates, including enhancements to Chat, MCP support, and the editor experience. This release focuses on improving developer productivity and collaboration through AI-powered tools and streamlined workflows.

Chat

Copilot Chat is Open Source

The GitHub Copilot Chat extension is now open source under the MIT license, encouraging community contributions and transparency. This allows developers to understand the implementation of chat modes, custom instructions, and AI integrations, fostering collaboration and innovation in AI-assisted coding.

Chat Mode Improvements

Custom chat modes now allow specifying the language model to be used, with improved editing support for chat modes, prompts, and instruction files. The Configure Chat action in the Chat view toolbar enables managing custom modes, reusable instructions, prompts, and tool sets. Chat mode, reusable prompt, and instruction files can be imported from external links, such as gists or community repositories.

Generate Custom Instructions

The Chat: Generate Instructions command helps bootstrap custom instructions for a workspace by analyzing the codebase and generating tailored instructions. Instruction files can be used to describe coding practices and project requirements, with the large language model loading instructions on demand based on file context.

Edit Previous Requests

Users can now modify previous chat requests, including text content, attached context, mode, and model. This feature allows for iterative refinement of chat interactions, with an experimental setting to control the entry point for editing requests.

Terminal Auto Approval

Agent mode now supports auto-approving terminal commands based on allow and deny lists. The allow list specifies command prefixes or regular expressions that can run without explicit approval, while the deny list overrides the allow list to force approval for specific commands.

Terminal Command Simplification

Agent mode now detects and simplifies commands with cd statements that match the current working directory. The agent is also aware of background terminals and actively running tasks, preventing duplicate tasks and improving workspace context.

Maximized Chat View

The Secondary Side Bar can be maximized to span the editor area, hiding the Primary Side Bar and panel area. This state is remembered between restarts, providing a focused chat experience.

Agent Mode Badge Indicator

A badge is now displayed over the application icon in the dock when the window is not focused and the agent requires user confirmation. This notification can be toggled via the chat.notifyWindowOnConfirmation setting.

Start Chat from the Command Line

A new subcommand chat is added to the VS Code CLI, allowing users to start a chat session in the current working directory with a specified prompt and options for mode, file context, and window management.

Fetch Tool Supports Non-HTTP URLs

The Fetch tool now supports non-HTTP URLs, such as file:// URLs, allowing it to return the content of files or resources at those URLs, including images.

Clearer Language Model Access Management

The UX for managing extension access to language models has been reworked, replacing the AccountName item with a Manage Language Model Access... item in the Account menu. This provides a clearer way to manage which extensions have access to the language models provided by GitHub Copilot Chat.

Reading Chat Requests

The "Show Chat Debug View" command allows users to see the details of all requests made by Copilot Chat, including the full prompt, enabled tools, and response. This log is helpful for troubleshooting issues but may contain personal information.

Edit Tool Improvements

This release includes changes to the predictability and reliability of the edit tools used for GPT-4 and Sonnet models, resulting in more reliable editing behavior.

MCP

MCP Support in VS Code is Generally Available

MCP support in VS Code is now generally available, supporting the full range of MCP features. Organizations can control the availability of MCP servers with a GitHub Copilot policy.

Support for Elicitations

The latest MCP specification adds support for Elicitations, allowing MCP servers to request input from MCP clients. VS Code now supports this specification.

MCP Server Discovery and Installation

The new MCP Servers section in the Extensions view includes welcome content that links to popular MCP servers. Users can install MCP servers directly from this view, with automatic integration into the Chat view's tools Quick Pick.

MCP Server Management View

The MCP SERVERS - INSTALLED view in the Extensions view allows users to monitor, configure, and control installed MCP servers. Management actions include starting, stopping, restarting, disconnecting accounts, showing output, configuring model access, browsing resources, and uninstalling servers.

MCP Servers as First Class Resources

MCP servers are now treated as first-class resources in VS Code, stored in a dedicated mcp.json file within each profile. This change provides better separation of concerns and enhances MCP server management.

MCP Migration Support

VS Code provides comprehensive migration support for users upgrading from the previous MCP server configuration format, automatically detecting and migrating existing MCP servers to the new profile-specific mcp.json format.

Dev Container Support for MCP Configuration

The Dev Container configuration devcontainer.json and the Dev Container Feature configuration devcontainer-feature.json support MCP server configurations at the path customizations.vscode.mcp.

Commands to Access MCP Resources

Commands such as MCP: Open User Configuration and MCP: Open Remote User Configuration provide quick access to MCP configuration files.

Quick Management of MCP Authentication

Users can now sign out or disconnect accounts from the MCP gear menu and quick picks, allowing for quick management of MCP authentication.

Accessibility

Keep All Edits from Within the Editor

Users can now accept all edits from within the editor by running the command Keep All Edits.

User Action Required Sound

The accessibility signal indicating when chat requires user action has been fine-tuned, with the default value set to auto. This behavior can be configured with the accessibility.signals.chatUserActionRequired setting.

Alert When Rendering Errors Occur in Chat

Screen reader users are now alerted when a chat rendering error occurs, with the ability to focus the error via keyboard.

Code Editing

Scroll on Middle Click

The editor can be scrolled by clicking or holding down the middle mouse button and moving the mouse. This feature is enabled via the editor.scrollOnMiddleClick setting.

Snooze Code Completions

Inline suggestions and next edit suggestions can be temporarily paused using the Snooze feature, accessible via the Copilot dashboard in the Status Bar or the Snooze Inline Suggestions command.

Editor Experience

Windows Accent Color

VS Code on Windows now supports using the accent color as the window frame border if enabled in Windows settings. The window.border setting controls the color of the window border.

Settings Search Suggestions

The sparkle toggle in the Settings editor now acts as a toggle between AI and non-AI search results, providing semantically similar results based on the search query.

Tasks

Rerun All Running Tasks

The new Tasks: Rerun All Running Tasks command allows users to quickly rerun all currently running tasks.

Restart Task Reloads Updated tasks.json

The Restart Task command now reloads the tasks.json file before restarting, ensuring that any recent changes are respected.

Terminal

Terminal Suggest

Significant improvements have been made to the terminal suggest feature, including a new selection mode setting (terminal.integrated.suggest.selectionMode) to control how suggestions are selected and accepted.

Multi-Command Support

Terminal suggest now supports multi-command lines, providing suggestions for all commands on the line.

Symlink Information

The realpath of a symlink is now displayed in the suggest details control, with unique icons for symlink files and folders.

Improved Sorting

Sorting has been improved to prioritize the most relevant suggestions, such as giving main and master priority over other branches.

Git Bash Improvements

Git Bash path completions for folders and files are now properly supported, with built-in commands presented as suggestions.

Contributions to Extensions

GitHub Pull Requests

Deeper integration has been made between the GitHub Pull Requests extension and Copilot coding agent, allowing users to begin, view, and manage coding agent sessions directly from VS Code.

Python

The Python Environments extension received several improvements, including polished terminal activation support for Poetry versions greater than 2.0.0, quick environment creation, and automatic git-ignoring of .venv folders. The extension is being rolled out as an optional dependency with the Python extension.

Pylance

The Pylance extension now includes several experimental MCP tools, offering access to Pylance's documentation, import analysis, environment management, and more.

GitHub Authentication

Revamped GitHub Sign-In Flow

The GitHub sign-in flow has been revamped to default to a loopback URL flow, improving reliability across all platforms.

Extension Authoring

Allow Opening Files When Using vscode.openFolder Command

Extensions that call the vscode.openFolder command can now pass filesToOpen?: UriComponents as options to select files to open in the workspace window that opens.

Proposed APIs

Engineering CSS Minification Using esbuild

VS Code now uses esbuild to bundle and minify CSS files, in addition to JavaScript sources.

Strict Layer Checks Using tsconfig.json

Multiple tsconfig.json files are used to ensure source code adheres to target environment rules, with CI checks to validate layer adherence.

vscode-bisect for Sanity Testing

The vscode-bisect project has a new --sanity option for quickly running sanity checks before releasing a new build.

Notable Fixes

Includes fixes for issues such as Agent suggesting && in Windows PowerShell.

Thank You

A thank you to the contributors of VS Code and its related projects.