The release of Visual Studio Code 1.64, aka the January 2022 release, brings improvements ranging from a new Side Panel to the ability to create automatic responses to common terminal prompts. The release also updates the web-based version of the code editor with support for signed GitHub commits.
Published February 3, Visual Studio Code 1.64 can be accessed from the Visual Studio Code website. The web-based version is in preview at vscode.dev.
With the update, commits created in the online editor now are signed and marked as Verified in the GitHub UI. Maintainers can commit to pull requests submitted from forks when using the web-based version of VS Code. This is due to the new GitHub GraphQL createCommitOnBranch API. Also, the Source Control view now supports multiple selection. VS Code for the Web also bundles pre-release versions of both the GitHub Pull Rquest and Issues and GitHub Repositories extensions.
Elsewhere with VS Code 1.64, Microsoft cites enhancements in areas such as JavaScript/TypeScript. With this version, many JavaScript/TypeScript snippets have been updated to support surrounding selected text.
Other new features and enhancements in Visual Studio Code 1.64:
- A layout option, Panel Alignment, has been added, allowing users to configure how far the bottom Panel spans across a window.
- Side Panel, a surface in the workbench opposite the Side Bar, is introduced, where developers can house views from the Side Bar or the Bottom Panel. More sets of views can be seen at once.
- An Audio Cues capability indicates if the current line has certain markers, such as errors, breakpoints, or folded text regions. These are played when the primary cursor changes its line or when a marker is added to the current line. Cues are enabled automatically when a screen reader is attached, but also can be turned on manually.
- The generic debugger now supports viewing and editing binary (aka “memory”) data.
- The built-in Markdown extension now includes path IntelliSense for images and links.
- The Settings editor now looks for string value matches in string and enum settings when searching. The new search algorithm also prioritizes whole word matches; if a developer is using both Java and JavaScript extensions, the Java settings will show up first when searching “java.”
- Settings Sync now can synchronize User Tasks.
- Unicode highlighting has been improved, with settings to better deal with false positives.
Visual Studio Code 1.63 was released in December. It was followed by updates 1.63.1 and 1.63.2, which address security issues and bugs.