Iterate across multiple files more efficiently with GitHub Copilot Edits - Visual Studio Blog (original) (raw)
GitHub Copilot Edits in Visual Studio 2022 combines the conversational flow of chat and an inline review experience to help you iterate across your codebase with more control and efficiency.
💡 Here’s how Copilot Edits helps with iterating across multiple files:
- Preview with clarity: Review a clear summary that highlights affected files and proposed changes.
- Review with flow: View code diffs inline, directly in your editor. Either the TAB key to accept and Alt+Del keys to reject individual changes, or apply/dismiss all at once.
- Iterate with confidence: Use checkpoints to revisit earlier iterations of a code file or try an alternative approach anytime for novel ideas.
Available in Visual Studio 2022 17.13, released February 11th.
- Copilot Edits is available in versions 17.13 and later of Visual Studio 2022, released February 11th, 2025*.
- To use Copilot Edits, sign in to Visual Studio 2022 with a GitHub account that has access to Copilot, now available to all users with Copilot Free.
*Preview versions of this feature were released in 17.13 Preview, released December 18th, 2024.
Get started with GitHub Copilot Edits in Visual Studio
- Start an Edits thread: In the Copilot Chat window, click the Edits thread button (a “+” symbol with a pencil icon).
- Describe your changes: Use natural language to describe your edits, just as you would in Copilot Chat.
- Specify context or let Copilot discover: Copilot Edits will automatically consider your current file, open files, or search for related files across your codebase. You can also specify context using # commands like #errors, #file, #solution.
For more details on how to use Copilot Edits, visit our documentation.
Watch Copilot Edits in Action
Want to see Copilot Edits in action? Check out our deep-dive walkthrough where we demonstrate how to:
- Use Copilot Edits to make simple and complex edits with the power of natural language.
- Use Copilot Edits to check your work and fix an issue.
We appreciate your feedback
Your feedback is invaluable for helping us improve Copilot Edits – please share with us on the Developer Community ticket for Copilot Edits or the Send Feedback button in Visual Studio.
Author
Aaron is a Product Manager on the Visual Studio IDE team, where he’s been working on AI assisted developer tools like GitHub Copilot Chat and IntelliCode. He’s pioneered interfaces that are now industry standard, such as the inline-diff view, copy-paste-update automation, and most recently, Agentic Coding through Copilot Edits