Visual Studio Code v1.85 Changelog

This update is all about giving you more control over your workspace and making teamwork easier. It matters a lot to developers who juggle multiple files, work with complex codebases, or rely on AI tools like GitHub Copilot to write code faster.

What's new

• Floating editor windows: You can now drag a file out of your main VS Code window and drop it onto your desktop. It opens in its own lightweight window, which is super helpful if you're using multiple monitors. Any changes you make in the pop-out window instantly update in the main window.
• Better extension update controls: Extensions are add-ons that give VS Code extra features. Before, they all updated automatically or not at all. Now, you can pick exactly which ones (or which creators' add-ons) you want to update on their own.
• Source Control incoming/outgoing view: When you share code online (using a system like Git), it's hard to track what's new. VS Code now has a special section showing "incoming" changes (updates your teammates made that you need to download) and "outgoing" changes (the edits you made that are ready to share).
• Voice control for AI: If you use your voice to talk to GitHub Copilot (the AI coding assistant), there's a new setting to decide how long the tool should wait after you stop talking before it processes your request.
• New Profile icons: You can now customize your different VS Code profiles (like separate accounts for school, personal, or work) with new icons like a robot, coffee cup, or piano.

Improvements

• Smoother accessibility tools: The Accessible View (a feature that helps visually impaired users read screen content) is smarter. You can now set it to automatically open right after you run a command in the terminal, making navigation smoother.
• Keyboard tooltips: When using your keyboard to navigate menus, helpful tooltips (those little text bubbles that explain a button) now pop up automatically when you focus on an item.
• Smarter file pasting: You can now copy files directly from your computer's normal file explorer and paste them right into VS Code's file explorer.
• Better settings search: When you search for a setting in the menu, it now puts exact title and keyword matches at the very top of the list, so you don't have to scroll to find what you need.
• Multi-file highlighting: If you click on a word like a variable in a TypeScript file, VS Code can now highlight that same word across all your open files, not just the one you're looking at.
• Auto-save actions: You can now tell VS Code to automatically fix code formatting or run clean-up tasks whenever it auto-saves your file in the background, not just when you manually hit save.

Fixes

• Fixed bugs in the Settings menu where it would completely freeze or fail to load if your internet connection had a hiccup.
• Fixed an issue where certain searches in the Settings menu would cause the editor to hang.

Breaking changes

No breaking changes in this release.