How VS Code’s New ‘Hey Code’ Voice Feature Is Changing Coding

Visual Studio Code, one of the most popular code editors among development teams, has introduced a voice session feature called "Hey Code" that is currently available only to GitHub Copilot subscribers.

The "Hey Code" assistant can be set to one of four options, including an inline chat view in the editor or a context‑aware "chatInContext" mode. Microsoft assures that the speech‑recognition runs locally on the computer and never sends data to any server.

This functionality relies on two dependencies: a GitHub Copilot subscription with its extension, and the VS Code Voice Extension, which is currently at version 0.4 and still under development. The voice extension supports only English at the moment, with plans to add more languages in the future.

Beyond Copilot, Microsoft also provides commands to start and stop voice input in the Windows terminal. In testing, the voice recognition works but often misses subtle actions like pressing Enter, making it less useful on its own; it performs better when paired with Copilot, which uses cloud‑based AI to infer user intent.

The most obvious use case for developers is dictating code directly into the editor, a demand that has existed since December 2017. The feature is now an active task in the current iteration plan, built on this relatively new speech‑to‑text extension.

A team member noted that, given the extension’s size, it is unlikely that voice‑to‑text will be built into VS Code’s core, and the editor will compete with third‑party solutions and Windows OS capabilities, leaving the investment’s value uncertain.

This update marks the first VS Code release in two months, breaking a previous monthly cadence due to holidays. Earlier in December 2023, VS Code added a floating editor window, which has since been refined to restore its state on restart.

The new version also introduces an option to open a Notepad editor within a floating window.

Another significant addition for non‑voice users is configurable auto‑save. Auto‑save can be set per folder or file type, with options to disable it when errors are detected or to exclude files outside the current workspace, helping prevent accidental loss of work while also introducing potential challenges for undoing unintended changes.