Microsoft Scales Back the GitHub Copilot Interruptions in Visual Studio

Anyone who has used GitHub Copilot will tell you that it’s incredibly useful. But they’ll also tell you it’s incredibly annoying. Fortunately, Microsoft has a fix.

“Based on your feedback, we understand how important it is to strike the right balance between helpful suggestions and maintaining control over your attention and workspace,” GitHub’s Simona Liao explains. “We’re excited to share features that give you enhanced control over your Copilot experience, so you can decide when suggestions show up and how much you accept, right inside your editor. These features are all available to you now, starting with Visual Studio 2022 17.14.13.”

This is an issue I’ve encountered m.ore times than I can count. I’m writing code and GitHub Copilot will suddenly jump in and suggest code as I type, and if it sort of matches what I’m typing, it will simply autocomplete it for me, overwriting what I was doing. So Visual Studio now offers the following options.

Wait for pauses in typing before showing whole line completions. This option is available by navigating to Tools > Options > IntelliCode > Advanced.

Automatically generate code completions in the Editor. This is the default experience and it’s enabled by default, but you can disable it now if needed at Tools > Options > IntelliCode > General. You can then manually get completion suggestions by typing Alt + , or Alt + . (period).

Hide next edit suggestions. This feature predicts the next edit you make and autofills it, which can be distracting or a mistake. Now, it can optionally display a margin indicator in the gutter on the side instead so you can see the suggestions first. You can enable this at Tools > Options > GitHub > Copilot > Copilot Completions; enable the option Collapse Next Edit Suggestions.

Partial-line completions. By default, GitHub Copilot code suggestions are all or nothing, but now you can enable partial-line completions to accept word-by-word or line-by-line. It’s enabled by default, but you can go to Tools > Options > IntelliCode > Advanced > Whole-line completions to revert it to the previous behavior.

Very interested in this and will see how this all works over the next few days.