Visual Studio Code 1.70 eases title bar customisation

Visual Studio Code 1.70, the latest release of Microsoft’s popular code editor, promises easier title bar customisation and Git merge conflict resolution, among a host of other improvements.

Introduced August 4, VS Code 1.70 can be accessed from visualstudio.com for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Also known as the July 2022 update, VS Code 1.70 brings easier title bar customisation, with developers now able to right-click to the title bar to open a context menu that toggles the menu bar. For Windows users expecting the system context menu, the menu still can be triggered by right-clicking the VS Code icon in the top left corner of the window, or by pressing. Alt+Space.

Also in VS Code 1.70, the three-way merge editor, for quickly resolving Git merge conflicts, is enabled by default. The merge editor features improved context menus, new commands to accept all changes from one side, enhanced diff colours, and a greater emphasis on conflicting versus non-conflicting changes.

Microsoft also introduced command line options to bring up the merge editor in VS Code. The company said it is beginning to explore alternative diffing algorithms to improve the precision of merge conflicts.

Meanwhile, VS Code now keeps folded ranges, even if the folding range is no longer part of the ranges computed by a folding provider. Folding controls in the gutter now can be hidden with the setting "editor.showFoldingControls":"never". Folding ranges still can be expanded and collapsed using the folding commands and shortcuts.

Specific to other new features and improvements in VS Code 1.70, search results in the search view now offer file decorations and colours on the right to express the file’s problems and source control information. The search view now supports multi-select: Any actions performed on one result in the selection also will be performed on other selected items.

In addition, tree views, such as the File Explorer, now support the Find control and Shell integration’s automatic injection, which had been moved out of preview, is now enabled by default. Also, developers now can display a UI that shows which scope the user is in during scrolling and the dev container command-line interface topic was updated for the newest version of the CLI.

The June 2022 release, VS Code 1.69, brought new file searching capabilities and a preview of Visual Studio Code Server, a service that enables secure connections for remote development without requiring SSH.