Visual Studio Code 1.79, published June 8 as the latest version of Microsoft’s code editor, features a read-only mode for specific files and folders in a workspace as a protective measure.

Also known as the May 2023 edition of the editor, developers can download the editor for Windows, Linux, or Mac from the Visual Studio Code website. With the read-only mode for the VS Code workbench, Microsoft notes that in some scenarios, it can be helpful to explicitly mark some files or folders as read-only. An example cited was a folder or file whose contents are being managed by different processes, such as the mode_modules folder managed by the Node.js package manager. Marking them as read-only can prevent inadvertent changes.

VS Code 1.79 also features automatic copying of external files. Developers who want to add an image or video into a Markdown document can drop or paste the file into their Markdown, instead of having to first manually copy the file into their workspace and add a link to it. If the file currently is not part of the workspace, VS Code automatically will copy the file into a workspace and insert a link to it. This also works with image data in the clipboard.

VS Code 1.79 follows last month’s VS Code 1.78 release. Other features in the new release include:

• After pasting a file, VS Code now shows a “paste as” control if there are other ways the pasted content could be inserted. Control is offered over the pasted content.
• The workbench.editor.tabSizing setting has added a fixed option that makes each tab equal width. When space becomes limited, tabs will shrink equally up to a minimum.
• All new Git repositories created using VS Code now set main as their default branch.
• Developers now can search for rich content in open notebooks from the Search control. Also, a new context key, notebookOutputInputFocused, was added to determine if a text box within a cell output has focus, so raw hotkeys a/b/j/k can safely be used while the output has focus.
• Linked editing is featured for JSX tags. When an opening JSX tag is changed, VS Code will automatically update the corresponding closing tag, saving time.
• TypeScript 5.1.3 now ships with the editor.