If you’ve ever been neck-deep in a tricky loop or trying to wrestle a stubborn refactor, only to have GitHub Copilot barge in with a full-method suggestion and overwrite half your line, you’re not alone. The “helpful assistant” can feel less like a partner and more like an overeager intern who won’t stop talking. Microsoft says it heard that complaint — loud and clear — and this month shipped a set of editor controls that let Copilot take a step back until you ask it to join the conversation.

The problem

Copilot’s value is obvious: it can save keystrokes, suggest tests, or finish a tricky line of code. But because many of the completions were requested at every keystroke, suggestions sometimes appeared too quickly, flickering in and out while you typed or — worse — accepting automatically and erasing what you were writing. That friction has driven complaints across forums and the Visual Studio Developer Community for months. Microsoft’s response is pragmatic: give people options.

What changed (and where)

Starting with Visual Studio 2022 update 17.14.13 (August 2025), Visual Studio exposes a handful of toggles that let you control when and how Copilot suggests code. The changes are intentional, surgical, and aimed at making suggestions feel like a tool you reach for rather than a presence that interrupts your flow. The update itself was published in the Visual Studio release cadence and is available via the usual channels.

Here are the headline controls Microsoft added (with the exact Settings paths, copied from the Visual Studio blog, so you can try them right away):

• Wait for pauses in typing before showing whole-line completions. Add a small debounce so Copilot doesn’t constantly request completions while you’re hammering keys. (Tools → Options → IntelliCode → Advanced.)
• Only receive code completions when you request them. Turn off automatic generation and instead trigger suggestions manually using Alt + , or Alt + .. (Tools → Options → IntelliCode → General.)
• Hide “Next Edit Suggestions” (NES) and preview them on demand. NES predicts your next edit; you can collapse these so they don’t auto-insert and instead show a gutter indicator you click (or press Tab) to expand. (Tools → Options → GitHub → Copilot → Copilot Completions → Collapse Next Edit Suggestions.)
• Partial-line completions. Accept a suggestion word-by-word (Ctrl + Right Arrow) or line-by-line (Ctrl + Down Arrow) instead of swallowing an entire proposed line or block. If you don’t like the behavior, you can revert it by toggling the “Whole-line completions” option.

Those options are not cosmetic — they change how suggestions are requested and surfaced, which directly affects whether Copilot feels like a background helper or an interruption.

Why this matters (beyond annoyance)

There are a few reasons these controls are useful beyond “I don’t want the AI to mess up my flow”:

• Cognitive load: When you’re problem-solving, the visual noise of ghost text and flickering suggestions breaks concentration. The debounce + on-demand trigger reduces that noise.
• Safety for edits: Next Edit Suggestions are clever, but they sometimes make incorrect assumptions about intent. Hiding NES by default gives you a chance to review before accepting.
• Finer control for the pro dev: Partial-accept lets experienced devs accept just the useful bits of a suggestion (a function call signature, a parameter name, a loop header) without pasting a whole block; you then must prune.

This shift also signals something about how teams building developer tools are listening: instead of layering more “smart” behavior on top of what already exists, they’re letting users dial the assistant’s assertiveness up or down.

Context: Copilot keeps evolving

This change arrives in the context of steady Copilot investment inside Visual Studio — new completion models and integration modes have been landing across the 17.14 releases this year. Microsoft’s cadence for Visual Studio updates means features like agent mode and newer completion models have been rolling out, and this is part of that same push to make AI assistive and manageable.

Related /

• GitHub Copilot’s new AI agent can now fix bugs and write code for you
• GitHub announces free Copilot access in Visual Studio Code

A quick practical guide to tuning it

1. Open Tools → Options.
2. For debounce / whole-line behavior: go to IntelliCode → Advanced and enable “wait for pauses in typing before showing whole-line completions.”
3. To disable automatic pop-ups: IntelliCode → General → uncheck “Automatically generate code completions in the Editor” and trigger with Alt + , or Alt + ..
4. To collapse Next Edit Suggestions: GitHub → Copilot → Copilot Completions → Collapse Next Edit Suggestions; look for the gutter margin indicator to preview hidden suggestions.
5. To accept partial completions: try Ctrl + Right Arrow (word) and Ctrl + Down Arrow (line); if they conflict with other shortcuts, you can toggle the behavior off by restoring “Whole-line completions.”

If Copilot has ever felt like a polite but overeager teammate, Visual Studio 17.14.13 gives you the off-switches and volume knobs you’ve been asking for. Turn on debounce or switch to manual completions, hide next-edit insertions behind a gutter indicator, and accept suggestions bit-by-bit. The result: keep the productivity gains, lose the interruptions.

If you want to try the changes, update to the latest Visual Studio 2022 (17.14.13) and poke the options I listed above — and if something still feels off, Microsoft explicitly asks for feedback through Developer Community so they can keep iterating.