Visual Studio Code v1.128 Changelog

This update is all about making the AI coding assistants inside VS Code feel more like a multitasking workspace. If you use AI to help you write or understand code, this release gives you way more control. It lets you juggle multiple AI tasks at once, brings visual tools out of beta, and adds some handy system-wide shortcuts.

What's new

• Multiple chats in one session: You can now open several related chats under a single Claude AI session. Think of it like having multiple tabs open in a browser: you can have one chat writing code, another writing tests for that code, and a third exploring a totally different way to solve the problem—all running at the same time without cluttering your screen with separate windows.
• Quick chats without a workspace: Normally, VS Code wants you to open a project folder before doing anything. Now, you can just open a quick chat to ask the AI a random question without picking a folder first.
• Read-only subagent chats: Sometimes an AI "agent" breaks off and spins up smaller helper agents (subagents) to do background work. You can now watch what these helpers are doing in a read-only view, meaning you can see their progress without accidentally interrupting them.
• Keyboard shortcuts for chats: There are new keyboard shortcuts to manage your chats. You can quickly create, close, and switch between different chat tabs without touching your mouse.
• Copilot Vision is officially ready: You can now drag, drop, or paste images and PDFs directly into your AI chat. The assistant can look at the visuals to help you out. This is now "generally available," meaning it's fully tested and ready for everyday use.
• Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) models (Experimental): If you have a specific AI model you want to use, you can now plug in your own access key to use it. This is still an experimental feature being tested out.
• Custom AI settings: If you connect to a custom AI, you can now tweak technical settings (like "temperature," which controls how random or creative the AI's answers are) to make sure it works smoothly with your provider.

Improvements

• Browser tab placement: When you open a web browser inside VS Code, you now get to choose where the tab goes. You can put it in your current window, push it to a separate group on the side, or pop it out into a completely separate window.
• OS-level keyboard shortcuts: You can now set up keyboard shortcuts that work even when VS Code isn't the main app you're using. You can trigger commands in the background while typing in another app.

Fixes

• This update includes patches for security issues to keep your coding environment safe.

Breaking changes

No breaking changes in this release.