GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio April 2026 Update

TL;DR

• Cloud agent sessions now launch directly from Visual Studio IDE
• Custom agents support user-level definitions that persist across projects
• New debugger agent validates bug fixes against live runtime behavior
• C++ code editing tools now GA; customizable keyboard shortcuts added

New

• Cloud agent integration — Start cloud agent sessions directly from the agent picker in VS. Agents create GitHub issues and pull requests on remote infrastructure while you keep working locally.
• Custom agents with user-level support — Define personal agents in %USERPROFILE%/.github/agents/ so they travel with you across all projects.
• Expanded agent skills discovery — Skills now load from .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/, and .github/skills/ directories, giving teams flexibility in how they organize shared capabilities.
• Debugger agent workflow — New agentic issue-to-resolution flow. Start from a GitHub or Azure DevOps issue; the agent reproduces the bug, instruments code, diagnoses root cause, and suggests a targeted fix through live execution.
• Customizable Copilot keyboard shortcuts — Remap acceptance shortcuts for inline suggestions via Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard. Control Edit.AcceptSuggestion, Edit.AcceptNextWordInSuggestion, and Edit.AcceptNextLineInSuggestion.
• Chat history panel — Browse past Copilot chat sessions with titles, message previews, and timestamps in a dedicated sidebar.
• C++ Code Editing Tools GA — Now enabled by default. get_symbol_call_hierarchy and get_symbol_class_hierarchy tools give Copilot language-aware navigation for C++ codebases.
• Auto-decoding in text visualizer — The Auto-detect and format button uses Copilot to identify encoding or compression formats and decode strings automatically.

Update: Download Visual Studio 2026 to get these features. See the Visual Studio blog and release notes for full details.

Source: GitHub Changelog