Visual Studio Code v1.36 Changelog

This update is all about giving you more control over your workspace and making day-to-day tasks feel smoother. It matters a lot to developers working on large projects, anyone using remote servers to code, and people who want to tweak their editor to look and act exactly how they want.

What's new

• Status bar hiding: You can now right-click the very bottom status bar to hide items you don't care about.
• Folder guide lines: The File Explorer and other side panels now show faint vertical lines (indent guides) so you can easily see which folders belong inside which.
• Drag-and-drop folders: You can now drag a folder from your computer directly into VS Code to copy it, rather than just opening it as a new workspace.
• Online services settings: A new menu option lets you easily see and turn off any features that connect to the internet (like updates or extension searches).
• Better terminal shell picker: A menu to quickly choose your default terminal shell (like Bash or PowerShell) is now available on Mac and Linux, not just Windows.
• Clean terminal environments: A new setting stops the VS Code terminal from borrowing its background settings from the editor. This fixes issues with tools like Python virtual environments that need a clean, standard setup to work right.
• Sequential tasks: You can now set up automated tasks to run in a specific step-by-step order, rather than all at once.
• Jump-to-cursor debugging: While debugging, you can jump your code execution directly to where your cursor is, skipping over lines you don't want to run.
• Single-line debug logs: You can now turn off word wrap in the debug console so your output stays on one long line instead of breaking awkwardly.
• Java installer: A new installer sets up VS Code, the Java extensions, and all the required background dependencies in one go.
• Remote development upgrades: If you code on a remote server, you can now save files to your local computer and drag-and-drop files directly to the remote machine.

Improvements

• Smarter file copying: When you copy and paste a file in the explorer, VS Code now names the duplicates more logically (like "hello copy.txt" instead of weird random names).
• Search highlights: When you search for a word in a file, the matches are now highlighted in the minimap (the tiny code map on the right side of the screen) so you can spot them easily.
• Warning colors: The colors used for warnings and errors in your file list and code have been updated to look better and stand out more.
• Faster basic code features: For JavaScript and TypeScript, simple features like code folding (hiding blocks of code) now load much faster. The editor no longer waits for the whole project to load before letting you do these basic tasks.

Fixes

• TypeScript bugs: Updated to TypeScript 3.5.2, which fixes several important bugs in the language.
• Problem path detection: When VS Code scans your code for errors, it can now automatically figure out if the file paths in the error messages are relative or absolute, making it easier to click through to the problem.

Breaking changes

• Alt key menu focus: Pressing the Alt key used to automatically snap your keyboard focus to the top menu bar. If you found this annoying, you have to manually change a setting (window.customMenuBarAltFocus) to turn it off.
• Ctrl+\ in terminals: On Linux and Windows, pressing Ctrl+\ used to split your terminal screen. Now, it sends a standard "quit" signal to the terminal. If you want the old split-screen behavior, you have to set up a custom keyboard shortcut.