Visual Studio Code 1.76 shines on usability, pytest

Microsoft has released Visual Studio Code 1.76, the latest monthly release of its open source programming editor. The upgrade, also known as the February 2023 release, brings usability enhancements to profiles and remote development and improves IntelliSense support for the pytest test framework within the Pylance extension.

Profiles were stabilized in VS Code 1.75 last month. With VS Code 1.76, the editor makes switching between profiles easier and indicates the current custom profile on the Manage Activity bar icon. Profiles support multiple VS Code configurations depending on workflow and the current project. Developers now can switch between profiles with the Profile:Switch Profile command in the Command Pallette. Profiles also can be created that include remote extensions.

For remote development, VS Code 1.76 brings usability improvements to the remote menu. There is now a default keybinding to open the remote menu, and the remote menu now makes it easy to view all basic actions for opening a remote window at a glance. And with this release, Microsoft added a walkthrough in the Remote Repositories extension to help users search, edit, and create quick commits in GitHub and Azure Repos without cloning locally.

Visual Studio Code 1.76 can be downloaded for Linux, Windows, and macOS from the Visual Studio Code website. Other highlights in VS Code 1.76 include:

• Microsoft’s Pylance extension for Python development adds IntelliSense support for code completions, Go to Definition, Find All References, and Rename Symbol for pytest fixtures and parameterized arguments.
• An experimental capability allows the editor to tokenize documents in a separate web worker, to improve responsiveness when dealing with large documents.
• The Explorer view container now is moveable and can be placed into the secondary sidebar or the bottom panel to enable further workbench customization.
• The Comments view has a new Expand All command to go with Collapse All.
• The kernel picker now shows the most recently used kernel by default.
• Accessibility improvements include new audio cues and an improved terminal screen reader mode.
• TypeScript 5.0 is supported.

VS Code 1.76 has since been followed by two point release updates. Version 1.76.1 addresses issues including folder-specific schema associations on Windows, and version 1.76.2 addresses a Git gutter issue.