Visual Studio Code v1.54 Changelog

This update is all about speed, customization, and making life easier for developers. It matters most to programmers who use Macs, people who rely heavily on the built-in terminal, and anyone who wants to tweak the look and feel of their coding environment.

What's new

• Apple Silicon support: If you have a newer Mac with an M1 chip, VS Code now runs "natively." This means it doesn't have to use a translation tool to work, so it runs faster and uses less battery.
• Product Icon Themes: You can now change the actual icons used inside VS Code (like the buttons for the sidebar). You can find these new themes in the extension marketplace.
• Persistent terminal processes: If you ever had to restart VS Code or reload the window because you installed an extension, your terminal windows would close and lose your work. Now, local terminals stay open and reconnect automatically when you reload.
• Auto-reloading Notebooks: If you're working with data notebooks (interactive coding documents) and the file changes on your computer, VS Code will automatically reload it for you.
• Brackets keyboard shortcuts: If you used to use the Brackets code editor, you can now install an extension to use its exact keyboard shortcuts in VS Code.
• IntelliSense for context keys: Extensions use special rules (called "when-clauses") to decide when to show certain menus. VS Code now auto-completes these rules for you as you type, making it much easier to write them.

Improvements

• Accessibility and navigation: Navigating with the Tab key is much smoother now. Toolbars and file tabs only take up one "tab stop," meaning you use the arrow keys to move between items instead of smashing Tab over and over. Also, screen readers (software that reads the screen aloud for visually impaired users) now work better with word navigation on Windows and are less "chatty" when reading menus.
• Terminal environment updates: Sometimes extensions need to change the background settings of your terminal. Instead of showing a confusing warning icon, VS Code now just quietly restarts fresh terminals to apply those changes automatically.
• Faster Windows terminals: The way terminal data is handled on Windows got a speed boost, so it should feel more responsive.
• Webview caching: "Webviews" are mini web pages inside extensions. VS Code is now smarter about not re-loading files from your hard drive if they haven't changed, which speeds things up, especially when coding over a remote connection.
• Emmet updates: Emmet (a tool for writing HTML super fast) merged two confusing "wrap" commands into one single, better command.

Fixes

• Extension dependency issue: A problem where extensions couldn't properly load their required add-ons was fixed in a quick patch (v1.54.1).
• Additional patches: A few other minor bugs were squashed in quick follow-up updates (v1.54.2 and v1.54.3) to keep the app stable.

Breaking changes

• Old word navigation commands: Because of the accessibility improvements on Windows, a few old, behind-the-scenes commands for moving the cursor word-by-word are now outdated. They still work for now, but might be removed in the future.
• Menu visibility settings: The setting that controls how the top menu bar looks was renamed to classic to make it less confusing. If you heavily customized your settings, you might need to adjust this.