Visual Studio Code v1.60 Changelog

This update is all about making coding smoother and less frustrating. It matters a lot to brand-new coders who might not know how to manually set up their editor, as well as power users who want their software to run fast and get out of their way.

What's new

• Automatic language detection: If you copy code from a website and paste it into a blank file, VS Code uses a built-in machine learning model to guess the programming language and apply the right colors and formatting automatically.
• Bracket colorization: Matching brackets (like { and }) now get their own colors. This makes it much easier to see which pairs belong together, even in really large files.
• Set debugging Watch values: When you are debugging (searching for errors in your code), you can now manually change the values of variables you are keeping an eye on, letting you test different scenarios on the fly.
• Locked editor group preview: You can now "lock" a specific layout of open files. This prevents a new file from accidentally taking over a spot where you want to keep a specific file open.
• JavaScript/TypeScript inlay hints: The editor now shows small, greyed-out hints right inside your code. For example, it will show the names of variables being passed into a function, or the hidden data types of variables, so you understand what the code does at a glance.
• Notebook layout customization: You can now change how your Notebook files look directly from the toolbar at the top of the editor.

Improvements

• Faster Notebooks: Notebooks now keep large outputs as raw binary data instead of converting them into text. This makes loading and running Notebooks with massive amounts of data way faster.
• Faster Notebook opening: When you open a Notebook file, VS Code no longer waits for every single related extension to load before showing you the file. It opens instantly and lets the other tools load quietly in the background.
• Settings editor upgrades: The menu where you change your settings now highlights code snippets in the descriptions with proper colors, making them easier to read. You can also now open the Settings menu in a side panel.
• Terminal characters: The built-in terminal does a much better job of drawing box-drawing characters and block elements, making text-based menus and borders look clean and aligned.
• Python testing: The Python extension does a better job of finding your tests, letting you navigate to them easily, and showing their status.

Fixes

• Lost editor layouts: Previously, if you restarted VS Code and one of your files failed to load, the editor would panic and close files until it found one that worked, ruining your layout. Now, if a file fails to load, it just shows an error message and a "retry" button, leaving the rest of your workspace alone.
• Terminal closing prompt: When you tried to close a terminal tab that had a program still running, the warning box used to confusingly offer a "Save" button. That has been fixed to make sense for a terminal.

Breaking changes

No breaking changes in this release.