Visual Studio Insiders release notes

Stay informed about your Copilot usage with real-time tracking and alerts when approaching limits.

GitHub Copilot recently transitioned to usage-based billing, so your Copilot usage is now calculated based on token consumption rather than by request (learn more from GitHub's blog).

To help you make the most of your usage in Visual Studio, we're continuously improving the product to help you optimize and track your Copilot usage. As part of this ongoing work, we've refreshed the Copilot Usage window and added proactive alerts as you approach your limits.

What's new

The updated Copilot Usage window in Visual Studio gives you a clearer view of your current usage based on the new billing model, making it easier to track how much you're using Copilot throughout your development workflow. You'll see real-time updates on your usage metrics, helping you understand your patterns and plan accordingly.

Access the usage window anytime from the Copilot badge menu → Copilot Usage.

Visual Studio also alerts you about your usage proactively, giving you time to adjust your usage before hitting any limits.

You'll see alerts when:

• You're approaching your usage limit
• You've reached your usage limit
• You have additional usage (also called overages) activated after reaching your usage limit

You can customize when the approaching usage alert appears by adjusting your quota warning threshold percentage in your settings, giving you control over how early you want to be notified.

More to come

This is just the start. We're continuously improving Visual Studio to help you optimize your Copilot usage and give you better visibility into how you're using it. Expect more updates across the product in the coming releases.

Share your feedback

We'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can help you better navigate your Copilot usage. Share your feedback and suggestions on Developer Community.

Switch to a smarter, less chatty Copilot agent.

Copilot Chat in Visual Studio has a new Agent (Preview) option in the agent picker, built on the same GitHub Copilot SDK that powers the GitHub Copilot CLI. The agent gets more tasks right the first time, with less back-and-forth to keep it on track. Responses are also shorter and easier to scan.

How to try it

1. Open GitHub Copilot Chat
2. Click the agent picker at the bottom of the window
3. Select Agent (Preview)

Use it on the work you already do in Visual Studio: feature changes, bug fixes, refactors, and all your other day-to-day tasks.

This feature is still in preview, and we'd love your feedback. Send it through Help → Send Feedback → Report a Problem.

Get targeted code review feedback from Copilot on any code you select.

Sometimes you don't need a full code review, just a second opinion on a specific block of code. Select code in the editor, right-click, and choose Copilot Actions → Review Selection.

Copilot leaves inline comments on your selection that you can review and act on. Use the sparkle icon on any comment to apply a code suggestion or, if there isn't one, have Copilot generate one for you.

This is powered by GitHub Copilot code review, the same experience you get when reviewing your changes in the Git Changes window before committing.

Organization owners can now add custom instructions to tailor Copilot's responses across the entire organization.

Note: This feature requires the repository to belong to a GitHub organization.

GitHub organization owners can now add custom instructions for Copilot to tailor responses to specific needs and preferences across the entire organization. This is especially helpful for teams who want to set up ground rules for using Copilot or have common instructions that everyone in the team can benefit from. For organization administrators who want to set up these instructions, see add organization custom instructions.

When you're working on repositories that belong to your organization, organization-level custom instructions are automatically applied. You can see these instructions in the reference list during your Copilot interactions and you can click on the link to view the full instructions.

If you prefer not to use organization-level instructions or want to avoid potential conflicts with your user-level instructions, you can disable this feature. Go to Tools → Options → GitHub → Copilot → Copilot Chat and uncheck Enable organization-level custom instructions.

React to PR comments and open the PR view in its own tab.

Reviewing pull requests is smoother and more comfortable with these updates.

• Emoji reactions on comments: The same reactions available on the web are supported for both GitHub and Azure DevOps.

• Open pull request in new tab: Click Open in New Tab in the PR header to pop the pull request into its own tab. Arrange it alongside your code for a more flexible review layout.

📣 See feature ticket to share your feedback and continue the conversation.

Ask Copilot about any branch by attaching it from the Git Repository window.

Branches join commits, changes, and PRs as context you can attach to Copilot Chat. Right-click any branch in the Git Repository window and select Add to Chat to include it in your conversation.

For example, ask Copilot to tell me about this branch to get a quick summary before diving into the code.

Visual Studio now finds pinned toolset versions from other installations instead of stopping at the first matching platform toolset in the current install.

You can now opt in to automatic discovery of MSVC Build Tools across all Visual Studio IDE and Visual Studio Build Tools installations on your machine, ensuring that a pinned VCToolsVersion is resolved correctly even when it lives in a different install.

Previously, Visual Studio only searched other installations for a matching toolset if your current install had no toolset at all for your target platform toolset. For example, if your project targeted v143 and your current Visual Studio already had any v143 toolset installed, the search stopped there, even if you explicitly pinned a specific VCToolsVersion that only existed in a separate installation.

Now, Visual Studio continues searching other installations to find the exact version you pinned, even when a different version of the same platform toolset is already present locally.

How to enable

Set EnableVCToolsVersionDiscovery to true in your project or Directory.Build.props:

<PropertyGroup>
  <EnableVCToolsVersionDiscovery>true</EnableVCToolsVersionDiscovery>
  <VCToolsVersion>14.43.34604</VCToolsVersion>
</PropertyGroup>

Why this matters

• Version pins actually work: A specified VCToolsVersion is honored regardless of which installation contains it, even when your current install already has the same platform toolset at a different version.
• Build reproducibility: Pin a known-good toolset version across your team without worrying about individual IDE updates changing compiler behavior.
• No manual path overrides: Cross-install toolset references are resolved automatically instead of requiring you to hand-wire VCToolsInstallDir.