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We maintain a single VS Code setting that allows you to opt out of the AI features provided in VS Code: "chat.disableAIFeatures" (see also: https://code.visuals
by bpasero 9mo ago
We maintain a single VS Code setting that allows you to opt out of the AI features provided in VS Code: "chat.disableAIFeatures" (see also: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_104#_hide-and-disable-github-copilot-ai-features https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_104#_hide-and-disab...). If you can still find AI features appearing after you have configured this setting, then please report an issue at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode https://github.com/microsoft/vscode and we are happy to take a look.
It is possible that from time to time a new AI related feature slips in that does not respect that setting, but we try our best to push fixes as soon as possible.
Thanks!
Ben (VS Code Team)
- kyrofa 9mo agoThanks Ben, I wasn't aware of that.
- g947o 9mo agoMake it opt-in only at welcome page, and we have a deal. (Of course, I know that's never going to happen.)
- illiac786 9mo agoI really don’t get this attitude. What deal do you mean? You using VS Code? Why not change the setting simply?
- apetresc 9mo agoBecause the point is just to loudly proclaim how virtuously anti-AI you are, how disruptive it actually is to your workflow is irrelevant.
- bigyabai 9mo agoglances at Windows 11 No, I think the point is to escape encroaching monetization that dilutes the value of local on-device text editing.
- g947o 9mo agoOh, I use coding assistants every day, just not the one that came with VSCode. Because I want to decide if/which coding assistant I want to use, not whatever VSCode forces upon me. In fact, at many companies, GitHub Copilot is explicitly forbidden. Not the smartest argument to brand this as anti-AI.
- KronisLV 9mo agoI really like the Copilot autocomplete across multiple symbols in the file (e.g. predictive edits that you can tab through). For most other stuff I prefer Cline/RooCode/KiloCode, but sadly it doesn’t seem like any of those offer similar autocomplete (Continue.dev did with even Ollama support for local models but the whole plugin was a buggy mess and it didn’t work well). Oh and sometimes Claude Code or Codex is nice in a terminal directly. Personally, I don’t mind something being there by default (same as how JetBrains has their pre installed plugin and also something like Junie available), as long as it’s easy to turn off or uninstall. Similar to how I wouldn’t scoff at a Git integration plugin even if I prefer to use Sourcetree or GitKraken.
- g947o 9mo ago> as long as it’s easy to turn off or uninstall That's the issue here. The "disable all AI features" option isn't really easy to find.
- blks 9mo agoIn my experience it’s people with “agents” mass editing their code, in their 10th attempt to convince their tool to do what they want it do, are people with a disrupted workflow, in a constant struggle with their tools.
- WolfeReader 9mo agoYou should really look in to the difference between opt-in and opt-out. Opt-in respects the user; opt-out is for foisting features that the user might not need or want.
- sauercrowd 9mo agoFlip it around: a new user might be confused why the AI features that all their friends told them about are not available. It's a tradeoff
- WolfeReader 9mo agoIf it means more users aren't using Gen AI, I'll happily take that tradeoff!
- kmoser 9mo agoIf it is opt-in for everybody, then their friends would also tell them that they have to opt-in to get it.
- CuriouslyC 9mo agoThe anti-AI folks should just fork everything at this point, because it's hypocritical as hell to complain about it and use a bunch of stuff built with it. Then you can opt out of society!
- WolfeReader 9mo agoOh no, just think of all the good AI-produced things we'll be missing out on. ...are there any?
- CuriouslyC 9mo agoI'd say the percentage of stuff developed using AI now is higher than the percentage of pro athletes who use performance enhancing drugs, and there's almost as much incentive to mask it and say "made without AI"
- spartanatreyu 9mo ago> Why not change the setting simply? My default settings are stored in a 11922 line json file. Am I expected to read that entire file to find the setting I'm after? Am I expected to do so when I don't know what the setting is called? The reason you can't simply change the setting is because the setting isn't simple. It's essentially a hidden setting, cloaked behind an ambiguous name in a user-hostile manner.
- heartbreak 9mo ago> My default settings are stored in a 11922 line json file. Am I expected to read that entire file to find the setting I'm after? That’s what AI is for. Have it turn itself off.
- spartanatreyu 9mo agoAh, but if AI was correct, I wouldn't need to turn it off.
- sgc 9mo agoIt's a tool for programmers. Use google + ctrl+f. Not a hill to die on.
- spartanatreyu 9mo agoHow is googling it meant to work when they keep changing what the AI settings are called each month?
- sgc 9mo agoAlternatively, use the single setting that was literally just given to you above. That is pretty much as easy as it gets without resurrecting Clippy to help you figure it out. It's not reasonable to expect a massive bloated gui if people have 10k+ settings they are using.
- 9mo ago
- kmoser 9mo agoThat, in a nutshell, is one of my biggest complaints about VS Code: there are many overlapping settings for various things, and I could never get clarity on what takes priority. Setting up things like formatters (and their settings) for various file types was a nightmare; between VS Code complaining I didn't have one set up (I did), the settings seemingly being ignored, and various other issues, I break into a cold sweat whenever I have to edit my settings file. But more to the point, I don't understand why one would ever have to edit the file directly when there's already a settings panel that lets you search for a setting using natural language, and get back a list of matching settings. Why doesn't VS Code let you make all the changes from the settings panel, without having to mess with JSON directly?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- kgwxd 9mo agoMake it a separate build that doesn't even have any of the AI code in it because a flag can't be trusted. Especially when there's a history of resetting flags after updates.
- joshAg 9mo agojust wanted to let you know that this comment is the only reason why i'm using vs code again after about 9 months of not using it at all.
- lioeters 9mo agoBravo, I respect that VS Code has added a single setting to disable all AI features. It prioritizes user choice and agency. Considering there was a recent rebranding as "the open source AI code editor", it means a lot to new and existing users that there's a choice to not use AI. For many companies and products it's apparently hard to do these days when LLM integration is the hot new thing pushed by management and investors. Developers, users, and citizens deserve the respect and right to opt-out from AI features as it permeates other areas of work, life, computing, commerce and governance.
- echelon 9mo agoI'd like to attach to this comment to say that we should support smaller companies. It doesn't matter how responsive a big company is if it controls too much surface area of the important technological salients. Large company hegemony of our industry is bad. VSCode, Google Search + Chrome, mobile phone duopoly, Amazon/AWS/MGM/WholeFoods/TeleDoc conglomeration and cross promotion... It doesn't matter. We need more distribution of power.
- yndoendo 9mo agoFun fact. I do not financially support any restaurant that has a Wall-street ticker. I wish more people would do this. There should be no reason to fund some CEO on Wall-street when we can benefit more by funding local communities. P.S. You have to pay me to use Microsoft products and to engage with Amazon.
- fingerlocks 9mo agoWould love to know what happens in perf review for MSFT employees that flip this switch.
- intern4tional 9mo agoNothing. This isn't something that is even tracked. AI usage is obviously encouraged but HR has far better things to do than go gather this kind of data. Internally, depending on what product is being worked on teams will have different development flows and different usage points of AI. For things like VSCode, teams have freedom on how they use it completely.
- fingerlocks 9mo agoThis is not true company wide. I’ve personally been reprimanded for low GitHub copilot usage by my orgs leadership, not HR.
- colbythrowaway 9mo agoHey, Ben. I recently (less than 2 months ago) did an in-depth analysis in the area of license compliance that suggests that Microsoft and many other companies that are shipping Electron apps aren't in compliance with the LGPL. (By all signs, it looks like the Electron project might not even be aware that Electron is subject to the LGPL, though they are. Even Slack, which isn't violating the license appears to be in compliance only incidentally—because they're shipping other LGPL components that they know are LGPL.) I was set to leave the company I was at a couple weeks later (end of November), and I did, so there haven't been any developments with my investigation/findings since I departed. I haven't prepared or published a formal write-up, and I've only brought it up in a semi-public setting once. It's a pretty big deal, though. Could you raise this with Microsoft legal (not Electron/GitHub) and suggest they look into this?
- intern4tional 9mo agoAssuming this is real and you have the authority to share your work from previous location; you should reach out and contact Microsoft Legal directly. A random engineer on Hacker News is not the proper channel. Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/compliance/sbc/report-a-concern https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/compliance/sbc/report-...
- colbythrowaway 9mo agoI'm not an engineer, and no one should be getting the impression that anyone else is under the impression that HN is the place to seek an authoritative disposition about this. It is, though, an acceptable channel for the sort of collegial and informal heads-up that this is (and which is all that this is). Your desire to condescend, however, is noted.
- __jonas 9mo agoI think it would be interesting for people if your comment was a little more specific about what the issue is. Is this about ffmpeg as raised here: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/34236 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/34236 ?
- pshirshov 9mo ago[flagged]
- steve_adams_86 9mo agoCouldn't this be asked with more kindness on GitHub in an issue or something?
- mort96 9mo agoI'm just so extremely uninterested in a text editor whose main selling point is that it's an "AI code editor".
- artdigital 9mo agoBtw, Zed has a similar setting to turn off all AI features :)
- NordSteve 9mo agoAnd I'm sure they'll never forget to connect an AI feature to it.
- artdigital 9mo agoYour point here being? In that case people will complain, and the next release will have it included into the setting
- vbezhenar 9mo agoThanks for that setting! TBH I'd prefer for vscode not to ship any AI features and let user install them from extensions, but managers probably will not be happy, so at least that setting helps to stay sane.
- Abishek_Muthian 9mo agoI actually moved to Zed for AI, Claude integration is seamless and the IDE is so fast and crisp. I can use what ever agent I want, when I need them instead of being asked to use Copilot. Except for few language related extensions, I don't have any other extensions on Zed. Which means I worry less about which of those extensions will be sold off to a malware developer. I had more issues with official extensions on VSCode (looking at you flutter) than not having any extension on Zed and having to rely on the terminal (which feels much closer to the system than it did on VSCode).
- barrenko 9mo agoCould you provide some detail on how you use it (the AI features)?
- Abishek_Muthian 9mo agoI just have a minimalist setup. Configuration - In external agents - I have Calude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI and a custom agent for Qwen Coder via Llama.cpp [1] In MCP - I have fetch, brave-search, puppeteer In LLM Providers - I have configured Llama.cpp, LMStudio and OpenAI (Zed Agent can access models from any of these providers). Workflow - When I need LLM assist I mostly use just Claude Code for specific tasks, with thorough scaffolding. One major drawback in using external agents on Zed is that they don't support history[2], Which doesn't impact me much as I use Claude just for individual tasks. I'm not really sure on how well Zed works for someone who 'vibecodes' entire project. [1] https://zed.dev/docs/ai/external-agents https://zed.dev/docs/ai/external-agents [2] https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/37074 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/37074
- barrenko 9mo agoThank you!
- kneath 9mo agoI appreciate this intent. I do wonder: do any of your team use this setting? I, too left VS Code after having to disable Copilot for the umpteenth time in a fit of frustration. I was aware of this setting and had it to disable all AI, alas. The frustration for me is that it turned my editor into a 2000s-era popup extravaganza (not necessarily anti-AI). Every line of my editor was constantly throwing a new popup or text to the side of my cursor. I know that VS Code's design philosophy has moved toward trying to make the editor have as many pop-ups as possible, but there are still a lot of us that don't think that's a good way to focus on the work. It is beyond frustrating when every week or so your editor decides you're wrong about that.
- nottorp 9mo ago> It is possible that from time to time a new AI related feature slips in that does not respect that setting You mean marketing forces you to "accidentally" slip it in? Just in case it sticks this time?
- compounding_it 9mo agoI don't know about marketing but if code reviews are done right I would love to know how something like 'AI feature' just slips in.
- nottorp 9mo agoIf the code looks correct, why not?
- blks 9mo agoPerhaps people pushing AI slop are not that great at doing good code reviews; which is a shame, really.
- nottorp 9mo agoThey have the "AI" do the code review of course. And don't imagine the LLMs are sentient, the directive to cram "AI" features down the users' throats is in the prompt.
- ustad 9mo agoVS Code is a flagship product from Microsoft. Relying on “we try our best to push fixes as soon as possible” for a global opt-out setting feels below the engineering standards we’d expect. This should be fail-safe by design, not best-effort.
- scotty79 9mo agoEverything in the world is best-effort at best. People who tell you otherwise about their pridhct are just lying to you. Do you prefer being lied to? Criticizing people for being honest about it is a good way to be lied to more.
- ustad 9mo agoI’d rather someone say “we architected this poorly and are working to fix the design” than “things slip through sometimes, report them when you find them.” The former is honest AND shows they understand the problem. The latter treats a design flaw as an acceptable steady state. Being honest about shipping bugs is good. Being honest that you’ve designed a system where the same category of bug will keep happening? That deserves criticism, not praise for honesty.
- madbbb 9mo agoI see a lot of AI features hate towards VS Code. Want to say that there are other people like me who really love these features, just want to thank you as a Copilot pro user!
- egorfine 9mo agoCould you perhaps one day make "chat.disableAIFeaturesMadeForShareholdersOnly"? So that we can have the actual good stuff (copilot, chat) and leave out the mountain of features that were clearly created to force induced demand for the sake of metrics inflation?
- never_inline 9mo agoYou can probably phrase this question as * Can we enable the only features we want by toggling chat.disableAIfeatures and only selectively enabling copilot and chat?
- fatata123 9mo ago[dead]
- jdejean 9mo agoWhoops!! Pesky mistake. An AI feature bypassed the AI opt-out setting yet again. What are we gonna do with all this data now??