Visual Studio Insiders release notes

We're excited to announce the availability of the Visual Studio 2026 October update. This release marks the beginning of a new era for Visual Studio with deep platform integration of AI, stronger fundamentals, and improved performance.

Download Visual Studio 2026 Insiders to enjoy these new features and improvements.

Version 12316.00

Released on October 20, 2026.

Top bug fixes From the community
Fixed Copilot BYOM: Foundry gpt-6-astra fails with HTTP 400 when using reasoning and tools Feedback ticket
Fixed Copilot AutoPilot (Manual) reports rejected Git tool call without prompt and no explanation Feedback ticket, Feedback ticket
C++23 feature complete in IntelliSense minus modules support
Updating the installer to include the latest servicing release of the 10.0.26100 Windows SDK (10.0.26100.9457)
Fixed a connection issue for remote iOS support for .NET MAUI and .NET iOS projects

Features

Released on October 13, 2026.

IDE

Expanded image preview formats 📣

Image previews in Solution Explorer now support more formats and work in Open Folder too.

You can now preview more image formats when you hover over image files in Solution Explorer. We've added support for TIFF, DDS, JPEG XR, HD Photo, Windows Media Photo, and WebP - matching what's available in the editor. This is in addition to existing formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, and ICO.

Image previews also work in Open Folder now, so you get the same hover preview whether your images live in a solution, a project, or just a folder you opened.

Tooltip in Solution Explorer showing a preview of an image file under the cursor

Some formats like WebP may require the appropriate Windows image codecs to be installed.

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

Close tabs to the right 📣

A familiar tab-management command from web browsers and VS Code is now available in Visual Studio.

A familiar tab-management command from web browsers and VS Code is now available in Visual Studio. Right-click a document tab or a tool window docked in the document well and select Close Tabs to the Right to quickly clean up your workspace while keeping the tabs you're actively using.

Screenshot of the Close Tabs to the Right command in horizontal tabs.

When using vertical tabs, the command automatically appears as Close Tabs Below and follows the visible tab order. It also respects your tab organization by keeping pinned and unpinned groups separate and leaving preview tabs open.

Screenshot of the Close Tabs Below command in vertical tabs.

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

File System View

Navigate your codebase using its physical folder structure and explore repositories from the root.

Navigate your codebase using the physical folder structure as it exists on disk. When working in a repository, File System view starts at the repository root, making it easier to explore source files, documentation, build assets, configuration files, and other content that may not appear in traditional project views.

Solution Explorer tool window with the File System view

For solutions outside a repository, File System view starts at the solution folder.

Switch Between Project and File System Views

The File System view is built directly into Solution Explorer, making it easy to switch between project-focused and file system-focused views without opening or managing additional tool windows.

Use Solution view when you want to understand your project's structure, dependencies, and loaded projects. Switch to File System view when you want to explore your repository as it exists on disk, including files and folders that are not part of the solution.

Need Both Views At Once?

For advanced workflows, use the New Solution Explorer View context menu command to open an additional Solution Explorer window.

Solution Explorer New Solution Explorer View context menu button

This allows Solution view and File System view to remain open side-by-side as separate tool windows, giving you simultaneous access to both the logical organization of your solution and the physical structure of your repository.

Side-by-side Solution Explorer tool windows on different views

Control your tool window tabs 📣

Control the size of your tool window tabs with customizable widths.

You can now set the minimum and maximum widths on window tabs. To customize the width limits, go to Tools → Options → Environment → Tabs → Tool Window Tabs.

Docked Tabs Min and Max

Before

Docked Tabs Before

After

Docked Tabs After

Tool window tabs will shrink to their content size and your set minimum tab width before cutting off with an ellipsis and shrinking all tabs uniformly.

Docked Tabs Shrink

This update also adds some consistency between tab height (all 24 px), clearer drag feedback, and improved high-contrast behavior!

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

Assertion diffs in Test Explorer

Visual Studio introduces a new side-by-side diff experience that makes string comparison failures easier to diagnose.

When expected and actual strings don't match, Test Explorer can now display them side by side and highlight the differences. Quickly spot subtle changes in long or multiline strings - even a single mismatched character - without searching through a wall of error text.

Test Explorer - assertion diffs

ESC cancels window drag 📣

If you accidentally start dragging a window, press ESC to cancel the drag operation.

It's easy to accidentally grab a tool window when you meant to click somewhere else. Previously, once you started dragging a docked window, there wasn't a quick way to cancel the operation. You had to finish moving or undocking the window and then put it back where it was.

Now, while dragging a docked window, you can simply press Escape before releasing the mouse button. Visual Studio cancels the drag and returns the window to its previous docked position, as if you had never started moving it.

This makes experimenting with window layouts a little less risky, but more importantly, it provides a quick escape hatch for those accidental drags that inevitably happen during the day. Grabbed Solution Explorer instead of its scrollbar? Press Escape and keep going.

This improvement comes directly from Developer Community feedback asking for window dragging to follow the familiar convention that Escape cancels an operation in progress.

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

TextMate updates for Rust and TOML

Updates to the TextMate grammars for Rust and TOML provide improved syntax highlighting and language support.

We've added TextMate grammars for the TOML language to provide syntax highlighting, code folding, brace completion, and comment/uncomment support. This means that you can now enjoy a better editing experience when working with TOML files in your projects.

TOML TextMate Grammar

The Rust grammar has also been updated to the latest version, which includes improved syntax highlighting and support for new language features. This update ensures that your Rust code is displayed accurately and clearly, making it easier to read and maintain.

Productivity

Create Markdown links by dragging files 📣

Quickly add links and images to Markdown files by dragging files directly into the editor.

Adding links and images to Markdown is now as easy as drag and drop. Drag a file from Solution Explorer or Windows File Explorer onto the Markdown editor, and Visual Studio inserts the correct Markdown syntax at the drop location. Regular files become links, while supported image files become image references.

Drag and drop files onto markdown documents

Visual Studio handles the path details for you. Links use paths relative to the current Markdown document, with normalized separators and encoded spaces, so they're portable across machines and ready to use immediately. The original file stays in place, so you can build documentation without interrupting your workflow.

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

Visualize .editorconfig line-length settings 📣

Visual Studio can now display vertical guides based on the rulers and max_line_length properties in .editorconfig.

The editor now helps you follow repository line-length conventions by displaying vertical guides at configured columns.

Vertical ruler guides shown at configured column widths in the editor

Use rulers to display one or more guides:

rulers = 80, 120

When rulers isn't specified, Visual Studio falls back to max_line_length:

max_line_length = 120

If both properties are present, rulers takes precedence. Set either property to unset to suppress an inherited value. The guide color follows the Visual Studio theme and can be customized through Tools → Options → Environment → Fonts and Colors.

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

GitHub Copilot

Drop files into Copilot Chat 📣

Attach files from File Explorer or Solution Explorer by dropping them into chat.

When you use the new Copilot chat experience, you can drag files from Windows File Explorer or Solution Explorer into Copilot Chat. Copilot attaches them to your prompt instead of opening them in the editor.

Drop files into chat

You can drop one file or several. Image files attach as files too, using the same attachment path as the + button in the prompt box.

To turn it on, go to Copilot options and select Use new Copilot chat experience.

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

A more capable Copilot Chat

Take on longer, more complex coding tasks with the new Copilot chat experience.

The new Copilot chat experience is now the default in Visual Studio, giving you a more capable agent for tackling substantial coding tasks from start to finish.

Use Copilot to investigate unfamiliar code, implement features, fix bugs, refactor across files, and work through longer tasks with less back-and-forth. The new experience also improves performance during longer sessions and gives you more ways to customize how Copilot works.

Behind the scenes, it's built on the Copilot SDK, the shared foundation used by the Copilot CLI and the GitHub Copilot app. This helps Visual Studio benefit more quickly from improvements across Copilot while continuing to provide an experience designed for Visual Studio developers.

The new Copilot chat experience in Visual Studio

Help us improve

We'd love your feedback. If something is missing or not working, send it through Help → Send Feedback → Report a Problem so we know what to prioritize next.

If needed, you can return to the previous experience by turning off Use new Copilot chat experience under Tools → Options → GitHub → Copilot → Copilot Chat, then restarting Visual Studio.

Resolve Git conflicts with AI

Use AI to resolve Git conflicts, then understand, review, and refine the proposed resolutions.

Copilot can now resolve Git conflicts for you, starting from Auto Resolve in Git Changes, the merge editor, or the Merge branches dialog. The merge editor can also display resolutions made in your working directory, helping you understand and review conflict resolutions.

Resolve existing conflicts

When you start a merge in Visual Studio, it checks for potential conflicts. You can choose Auto Resolve from the Merge branches dialog. If there are no conflicts, no requests will be sent, and no tokens will be spent.

Merge branches dialog with Auto Resolve option.

For a Git operation already in progress, conflicted files appear under Unmerged Changes in the Git Changes window. Select one or more files and then choose Auto Resolve from the context menu. If you're already in the merge editor, select Auto Resolve in the toolbar.

Git Changes with Unmerged Changes section open and the Auto Resolve option selected.

Review conflict resolutions

Copilot summarizes its conflict-resolution decisions and provides rationale based on your Git history. Even if you aren't familiar with the changes on either branch, you can use this to check how each conflict was resolved. If you need more details, ask Copilot for further explanation or, if you are satisfied with the results, ask it to stage the resolutions and complete the merge.

Copilot Chat's summary of a resolved merge conflict, explaining its decisions and what validations were performed.

To review changes to unmerged files from an agent, including one outside Visual Studio, open a file under Unmerged Changes in the Git Changes window and inspect it in the three-way merge editor. In Visual Studio Insiders, select the gear icon next to Accept Merge then Result Only to focus on the resolved file while retaining the option to inspect either side of the conflict. You can switch back to Mixed View, Vertical View, or Horizontal View at any time.

Merge editor with the gear menu expanded, showing available view modes.

Tip: To start over, select Restart resolutions from the Accept Merge dropdown.

Accept Merge dropdown button with Restart resolutions highlighted.

Git tooling

Review pull requests faster with Change Groups

Use AI-generated groups, tags, summaries, and review guidance to understand and track large pull requests.

Large pull requests often mix features, tests, refactoring, and supporting changes across many files. Change Groups uses GitHub Copilot to organize related changes into focused review units, helping you understand the structure of a pull request before opening every file.

Change Groups organizes a pull request into tagged groups with summaries, review guidance, related files, and progress tracking.

Each group includes scannable tags that explain how its changes are related and what to expect. A concise description summarizes the intent of the group, while Review focus highlights areas that may need closer attention.

As you review, you can:

  • Drag groups into the order you prefer to review them.
  • Use checkboxes to track your progress across groups and files.
  • Navigate between comments without losing your place.
  • Review related files together instead of reconstructing the change from a flat file list.
Copy commit ID 📣

Copy a commit's full SHA directly from the Git History context menu.

Finding and sharing a Git commit ID is now faster in Visual Studio. In Git History, right-click any single commit and select Copy Commit ID to copy its full SHA directly to the clipboard.

Copy Commit Id

This removes the need to open Commit Details and manually select the identifier. The command is available in branch, file, and folder history, making it easier to reference commits in pull requests, work items, terminal commands, documentation, and team conversations.

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

PR updates: reviewers, images, and merge messages

Keep pull request reviews moving with better control over discussions and merge details.

These updates give you more ways to keep pull request reviews moving, from focusing comment threads to preparing a merge.

  • Comment filtering lets you narrow comments by status or author to focus on the feedback you need in the Overview and file changes views.
  • Reviewer management lets you add or remove reviewers on active GitHub and Azure DevOps pull requests. Azure DevOps adds reviewers as optional reviewers.
  • Image uploads in GitHub comments let you paste a screenshot or another image directly into a pull request discussion. (Already supported in Azure DevOps.)
  • Merge message editing lets you customize the commit title and body before merging or setting a pull request to auto-complete in GitHub or Azure DevOps.
  • Filter the pull request list by ID to quickly locate your pull request.

Pull request comment filter menu showing predefined and detailed filtering options

Extensibility

Extension Manager renderings 📣

The Extension Manager now renders animated GIFs, tables, and headers correctly giving extensions a richer presentation.

When a description of an extension contains animated GIFs, tables, or headers, the Extension Manager now renders them correctly. This gives extensions a richer presentation and allows developers to better showcase their work.

For example, tables are now properly rendered with better styling to show padding, borders, and alternate-row highlighting.

Ext Man Tables

Above you can see the table rendered beautifully using the new styling.

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


Top bug fixes From the community
Copilot cannot edit files when apply_patch and edit_file are unavailable Feedback ticket
Fixed an issue that prevented agents from making edits to files on a user’s system Feedback ticket, Feedback ticket


Known Issue The following is the known issues for 18.12 Insiders release:

From our entire team, thank you for choosing Visual Studio! For the latest updates, resources, and news, check out the Visual Studio Hub and stay in touch.

Happy coding!
The Visual Studio team


Note

This update may include new Microsoft or third-party software that is licensed separately, as set out in the 3rd Party Notices or in its accompanying license.

Note

We may use an AI-based tool to analyze diagnostic data (such as dumps and traces) collected through Visual Studio and Visual Studio Feedback to help improve user experience. If you wish to opt out, follow the steps here

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