VS Code 1.118 Is Here — And It's All About Working Smarter with Copilot 🚀
Released April 29, 2026 — VS Code keeps leveling up, and this one's packed.
You open VS Code, kick off a Copilot agent task, step away from your desk, and come back to find… it's been waiting for your approval the whole time. Frustrating, right?
VS Code 1.118 is basically Microsoft reading that frustration and going, "Okay, okay, we got you." This release is laser-focused on making your Copilot workflow faster, smarter, and less tethered to your physical machine. Let's dig in. 👇
🎮 Remote Control for Copilot CLI Sessions
This is the headline feature — and it genuinely changes how you run long agent tasks.
Previously, if your Copilot CLI session hit a pause (waiting for an approval, asking a question), you had to physically be at your machine to respond. Not anymore.
With remote control, you can monitor and steer active Copilot CLI sessions from GitHub.com or the GitHub mobile app — while the session keeps running in the background on your dev machine. Check progress, respond to approvals, redirect the agent… all from your phone or another device.
To try it out:
- Enable the
github.copilot.chat.cli.remote.enabledsetting - Type
/remote onin a Copilot CLI chat - That's it — you're now in control from anywhere
This is a big deal for anyone running heavy multi-step agent workflows. No more babysitting your terminal.
🔍 Smarter Codebase Search — Now for Everyone
Search in Copilot just got a serious upgrade on two fronts.
Semantic indexing is now available in ALL workspaces — not just GitHub/ADO repos. So when you ask Copilot something like "where do we handle user authentication?", it searches by meaning, not just literal text. It'll surface files using signIn, verifyCredentials, OAuth token exchange, etc., even if the word "authentication" never appears. The index builds automatically, though non-GitHub workspaces may need a few minutes on first run. You can also trigger it manually with Build Codebase semantic index.
GitHub text search across repos and orgs is the second addition. When you need a precise grep-style match — an exact API name, an error string — semantic search isn't ideal. The new githubTextSearch agent tool handles exactly that: regex-style search across any GitHub repo or your entire organization. Pair it with the existing githubRepo semantic tool and Copilot now has a seriously comprehensive understanding of code it hasn't even opened yet.
⚡ Token Efficiency — Your Wallet Will Thank You
With GitHub Copilot moving to usage-based billing on June 1, 2026, this section is arguably the most practically important of the entire release.
The team has shipped multiple improvements to get more done with fewer tokens:
Prompt caching is now way more efficient. Cache breakpoints are now strategically placed at stable boundaries — end of system prompt, end of tools, end of the most recent tool turn. The result? Over 93% of each request is reused from cache instead of billed as fresh input. That's massive for long, multi-turn agent workflows.
The Tool Search Tool splits the agent's toolset into two groups: a compact always-available core (~30 tools covering 88% of calls), and deferred tools loaded only on demand. Already showing up to 20% token savings for Anthropic models, and now rolling out to supported OpenAI models too.
New Agentic Search and Execution tools are powered by smaller, purpose-built models that cost significantly less to run. The search tool handles codebase exploration independently. The execution tool handles terminal commands (capped at 10 calls per invocation so it can't loop forever) and strips verbose terminal output down to only what the coding agent actually needs. Together: up to 20% more token savings over a month of testing.
If you're on a Copilot plan, these changes are already quietly saving you budget in the background. Nice.
📚 Chronicle — Your Chat History, Actually Useful
Ever tried scrolling back through 3 weeks of Copilot chat sessions trying to remember what you worked on? It's chaos.
Chronicle (experimental, behind github.copilot.chat.localIndex.enabled) fixes this by storing your chat activity in a local SQLite database. Every session logs: branch, repo, timestamps, files touched, and external references like PRs, issues, and commits.
Then you get three handy slash commands:
/chronicle:standup— Auto-generates a standup report from the last 24 hours, grouped by feature/branch, with summaries and PR links 🙌/chronicle:tips— Analyzes 7 days of your usage and gives you personalized tips to improve prompting and tool usage/chronicle [query]— Free-form natural language queries like "what files did I edit yesterday?"
The standup one alone might justify enabling this feature. No more "uh... I worked on some stuff" moments in your daily sync.
🛡️ Enterprise Controls & Security Tightening
A couple of notable changes on the trust and security front.
Approved Account Organizations Policy lets enterprises gate all AI feature access behind approved GitHub organization membership. Features simply don't activate until the signed-in account belongs to an approved org and the policy clears. Fail-closed behavior — nothing shows until eligibility is confirmed.
Sandbox read permissions are now tighter by default. Previously, commands running in the sandbox had automatic read access to everything under $HOME. Now, read permissions are scoped strictly to the executing command's needs. Workspace folders still get access, but arbitrary $HOME paths are denied by default. A quiet but meaningful security improvement.
🧪 TypeScript 7.0 Beta + Other Dev Goodies
TypeScript 7 is a full rewrite in native code, and VS Code 1.118 is making it easier than ever to try the beta.
For the VS Code team itself, the switch to TS 7 for development builds has been dramatic: full type-checking of ~6,000 files dropped from ~60 seconds to ~10 seconds. The entire build + typecheck cycle now takes around 30 seconds total. That's not just impressive — that's life-changing for contributor DX.
You can try TS 7.0 Beta right now by installing the TypeScript Native Preview extension. Switching back to stable TS 6 is just as easy.
A few other notable additions this release:
- WebSockets for OpenAI models — persistent connections instead of new HTTP requests per turn, making OpenAI models about 12% faster in agent workflows
- Dev Container lockfile enabled by default — pins Feature versions and checksums to protect against supply chain attacks
- Optimized large resource loading in webviews — file contents now stream in chunks instead of loading entirely into memory, which matters a lot when you're loading big video files in a notebook
🎯 Wrap-Up — The Efficiency Update
VS Code 1.118 isn't about flashy new UI tricks. It's about efficiency — token efficiency, workflow efficiency, and making the AI-assisted development experience genuinely less friction-y.
Remote CLI control, smarter search, Chronicle for history, tighter sandbox security, and TypeScript 7 performance improvements all point to the same theme: VS Code is getting out of your way and letting you move faster.
The token efficiency work especially deserves recognition — the team shipped real, measurable savings right before usage-based billing kicks in. That's not an accident.
Update today via Help → Check for Updates, or grab the VS Code Insiders build to get bleeding-edge features the moment they drop.
Happy Coding! 💻
📌 Quick Reference — Key Features at a Glance
| Feature | Status | Setting / Command |
|---|---|---|
| Remote Copilot CLI control | Experimental | github.copilot.chat.cli.remote.enabled |
| Semantic indexing (all repos) | ✅ Live for everyone | Auto / Build Codebase semantic index |
| GitHub text search (orgs) | ✅ Live | Built-in githubTextSearch tool |
| Tool Search Tool (OpenAI) | Rolling out | github.copilot.chat.responsesApi.toolSearchTool.enabled |
| Chronicle (chat history) | Experimental | github.copilot.chat.localIndex.enabled |
| TypeScript 7.0 Beta | Preview | Install TypeScript Native Preview extension |
| Dev Container lockfile | ✅ Default ON | dev.containers.lockfile |
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Muhammad Hamid Raza
Content Author
Originally published on Dev.to • Content syndicated with permission