Visual Studio Code adds ‘Hey Code’ voice command

Visual Studio Code 1.86, the January 2024 release of Microsoft’s code editor, introduces a voice command, “Hey Code,” that starts a session with Copilot Chat. The new release also brings per-window zoom levels.

Unveiled February 1, Visual Studio Code 1.86 can be downloaded for Windows, Linux, or Mac at the visualstudio.com website. 

A new accessibility.voice.keywordActivation setting enables Visual Studio Code to listen for the “Hey Code” voice command to start a voice session with Copilot Chat, offering a chat interface. Microsoft noted that the voice recognition is computed locally on the user’s machine and not sent to any servers. Extensions are required including GitHub Copilot Chat, which provides AI programming assistance through a conversational interface, and VS Code Speech, which adds speech-to-text capabilities.

With per-window zoom levels, enabled via window.zoom.PerWindow, lets developers configure zoom commands to apply only to the active window and not all open windows. Microsoft believes using zoom commands will be mostly ad hoc, such as when giving a presentation, so should apply only to the window they’re invoked from.

Elsewhere in VS Code 1.86, triggered breakpoints can be set that are automatically enabled once another breakpoint is hit. For example, this can be used when diagnosing failure cases in code that happen after a certain precondition. Triggered breakpoints work for all languages.

VS Code 1.86 follows VS Code 1.85, which arrived in December and featured floating windows. Two subsequent updates to VS Code 1.85, versions 1.85.1 and 1.85.2, were released with fixes, including updating Electron 25 builds.

Other new features in Visual Studio Code 1.86:

• The multi-file diff editor now is enabled for all users. It lets users view changes across multiple files in one scrollable view.
• Sticky Scroll has been extended to all tree views, enabling easier navigation of project trees. It is limited to 40% of view height.
• Users can paste a URL to automatically create a Markdown link. And when users paste a URL into a Markdown file with text selected, VS Code now automatically inserts a Markdown link.
• A new setting, scm.input.MinLineCount, can be used to control the initial height of the commit input field.
• More fine-grained notification is offered for disabling notifications coming from extensions.
• All Auto Save settings now can be configured per folder or language, which lets users selectively enable Auto Save only for specific languages or folders. A new files.autoSaveWhenNoErrors setting lets Auto Save be disabled if there are error markers in the file when Auto Save normally would save the editor.
• Support for the beta version of the TypeScript 5.4 language is being previewed.
• The Python Debugger extension now is installed by default alongside the Python extension.