Visual Studio Code 1.128

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Release date: July 8, 2026

Downloads: Windows: x64 Arm64 | Mac: Universal Intel silicon | Linux: deb rpm tarball Arm snap

Welcome to the 1.128 release of Visual Studio Code. This release brings richer multi-chat agent sessions, generally available image support in Chat, and OS-level keyboard shortcuts.

• Multi-chat agent sessions: Run several related chats in one Claude session to compare approaches and work in parallel.

• Quick chats: Ask a question in the Agents window without opening a workspace first.

• Copilot Vision: Attach images and PDFs to Chat by pasting, dragging, or dropping them, now generally available.

• Browser tab placement: Choose where integrated browser tabs open: the active group, a dedicated side group, or a separate window.

• OS-level keyboard shortcuts: Trigger VS Code commands with keybindings that work even when VS Code isn't focused.

Happy Coding!

VS Code is rolling out gradually to all users. Use Check for Updates in VS Code to get the latest version immediately.

To try new features as soon as possible, download the nightly Insiders build, which includes the latest updates as soon as they are available.

Agents

Multiple chats in a session now supports Claude agent

Claude agent-host sessions in the Agents window provide agentic coding capabilities powered by Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK directly in VS Code. Multiple chats keep related conversation threads in one session instead of spreading them across separate top-level sessions.

Single-chat Claude sessions remain a focused way to work with the agent. With multiple chats, a session can contain related chats, so you can compare approaches, branch from an earlier turn, and run work in parallel. You can add chats, fork a chat from an existing turn, switch between peer chats, and send turns concurrently. Each chat keeps its own history, title, and model selection, and restores with the parent session after restart. Peer chats stay grouped under the Claude session and don't appear as separate top-level sessions.

The following video shows a single Claude session with multiple chats: the main chat adds a /health endpoint to an Express app, while a peer chat writes tests for it in parallel, and a forked chat explores an alternative implementation. Each chat runs independently and stays grouped under the same session.

Chat without a selected workspace in the Agents window

The Agents window gives you a dedicated place to create, resume, and manage agent sessions. For project work, those sessions keep the chat, files, and changes together with the workspace.

For questions not tied to a folder, you can now start a chat in the Agents window without selecting a workspace. These chats appear in the Chats section and open focused and ready for input. Start a quick chat with or the plus button on the Chats section header.

Because a quick chat is workspace-less, it does not show the workspace-specific Changes or Files side pane. Quick chats are restored with your other sessions after reload and remain separate from workspace sessions.

Chats without a workspace are supported only by agent host sessions, so this experience is available when the agent host is enabled with chat.agentHost.enabled Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders This setting is managed at the organization level. Contact your administrator to change it.ORG.

The Pinned and Chats groups stay visible when empty by default. Use sessions.list.showEmptyDefaultGroups Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders to hide these default groups until they contain sessions.

Read-only subagent chats in the Agents window (Preview)

When an agent delegates work to subagents, you can follow each worker's progress without interrupting or steering it from the main conversation. The Agents window provides a dedicated space for agent-driven workflows across projects, with chat and sessions as the primary interface.

When a session spawns subagents, their transcripts appear as read-only peer chats. Subagent chats are hidden from the tab strip until you open them from the Conversations menu, the running-subagents chip, or the inline subagent pill in the parent transcript. Opened subagent chats show their live progress, use the subagent title when available, and omit the composer and mutating chat actions so the worker transcript stays view-only.

Keyboard shortcuts for chats in the Agents window

The Agents window supports multi-chat sessions, where one agent session can contain multiple related chats. Keyboard-driven chat navigation helps you move between chats and manage chat tabs without leaving the keyboard.

• Create a chat with .
• Reopen the last closed chat with .
• Go to the next or previous chat with and .
• Quickly switch between open chats with and .
• Close the active chat tab with .
• Delete the active non-main chat with .
• Open a searchable picker for open and closed chats with .

These shortcuts are scoped to the Agents window and fall back to the existing session-level behavior when there is no chat-specific action to perform.

Chat

Copilot Vision is now generally available

Multimodal support is now generally available in VS Code, starting with this latest release. Attach images and PDFs by pasting them into Chat, dragging and dropping them, or using the context menu. Images may also be read by the agent via a tool call.

Check out this GitHub changelog for supported formats and availability details.

BYOK models in agent host Copilot sessions (Experimental)

Setting: chat.agentHost.byokModels.enabled Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders

Use Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) models when you run sessions on an agent host. Enable chat.agentHost.byokModels.enabled Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders and restart the agent host process for the change to take effect.

This feature is experimental and is still under active development.

Configure sampling parameters for custom endpoint models

You can configure temperature and top_p for each Custom Endpoint model, so requests work with providers that have strict parameter requirements.

Add the modelOptions object to a model's JSON configuration:

Set a property to a number to override the default value that VS Code sends. Set it to null to omit the parameter from requests and use the model server's default. These options apply to Chat Completions, Responses, and Messages-compatible endpoints.

Configure the default utility model for BYOK

Setting: chat.byokUtilityModelDefault Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders

When you use a bring your own key (BYOK) model as the main agent model, you can change the default behavior used by built-in utility flows, such as generating a chat title or a commit message. Set chat.byokUtilityModelDefault Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders to use the main agent model, use a model provided by GitHub Copilot, or not use a default utility model.

Note: The default behavior is that no utility models are used with BYOK models as the main agent. Background tasks such as chat title generation and commit message generation do not work unless this option is set.

This setting has no effect when the main agent model is provided by GitHub Copilot. A model configured with chat.utilityModel Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders or chat.utilitySmallModel Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders takes precedence over this default.

Deep links to a specific chat

The Agents window helps you manage agent sessions and return to their associated workspaces and chats. Deep links can take you directly back to the relevant chat, so you don't have to open the workspace first and then manually find the session in Chat.

When an app opens a vscode:// deep link for a session, VS Code opens the workspace and focuses the specific chat identified by the link's session query parameter. The Open in VS Code action in the Agents window uses the same behavior, opening both the session's workspace folder and its active chat in the new VS Code window.

Editor Experience

Configurable placement of integrated browser tabs

Setting: workbench.browser.newTabPlacement Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders

Keeping tabs organized can be a challenge. With this release, you can configure a location for browser tabs to open via the workbench.browser.newTabPlacement Open in VS Code Open in VS Code Insiders setting. The setting can take the following values:

• activeGroup (default): Browser tabs always open in the active editor group.
• sideGroup: Browser tabs open in a dedicated group to the side. This group is locked so only browser tabs open there.
• window: Browser tabs open in a dedicated auxiliary window. This window group is also locked to only browser tabs.

You can still reorganize tabs as desired, and pages opened from an existing tab (for example, by selecting a link with Ctrl) open in the same group as the parent.

OS-level keyboard shortcuts

VS Code can now contribute OS-level keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts take effect even if VS Code is not in focus. Add systemWide to your keybinding definition in your keybindings.json to make it OS-level. For example, here's a keybinding in keybindings.json to focus the Agents window on MacOS: