Troubleshooting common issues with GitHub Copilot

This guide describes the most common issues with GitHub Copilot and how to resolve them.

In this article

For questions about the general use of GitHub Copilot, product impact, human oversight, and privacy, see the comprehensive list of GitHub Copilot FAQs.

If GitHub Copilot stops working, check GitHub's Status page for any active incidents.

Unable to use the GitHub Copilot extension in the IDE

We recommend you follow the quickstart guide for GitHub Copilot while setting up GitHub Copilot on your machine. For more information, see "Quickstart for GitHub Copilot."

The GitHub Copilot extension is frequently updated to fix bugs and add new features. It's important to keep your extension up to date because older clients cannot communicate with the GitHub Copilot servers. Update your GitHub Copilot extension on all the machines you have it installed.

For more information about configuring GitHub Copilot in a supported IDE, see "Configuring GitHub Copilot in your environment."

GitHub Copilot not working in some files

If you're using GitHub Copilot with a Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise license, you may not see code completion suggestions in your editor for some files. This happens when a file is excluded from being used by GitHub Copilot. Content exclusion can be configured by a repository administrator, or by an organization owner.

When a file is affected by a content exclusion setting, GitHub Copilot will not suggest code completion in that file, and the content of that file will not be used to inform code completion suggestions in other files.

If a file has been configured as excluded content for GitHub Copilot, the icon in the status bar will have a diagonal line through it. Hover over the icon to see a tooltip that tells you which settings have applied this restriction.

Screenshot of the Copilot icon in VS Code with a tooltip for a content exclusion.

For more information, see "Excluding content from GitHub Copilot."

GitHub Copilot content exclusions are not being applied

Note

Excluding content from GitHub Copilot is currently in public preview and is subject to change.

Content exclusion can be configured at the repository, organization, and enterprise level. The scope of the exclusion is determined by the level at which the rule is set:

  • Repository administrators can only exclude content for their own repositories. This affects Copilot users working within those specific repositories.
  • Organization owners can exclude content for users assigned a Copilot seat through their organization.

Note

In the current public preview release, organization-level settings for content exclusion typically apply to all Copilot users in the enterprise. This will change with the general availability (GA) release of this feature on November 8th, 2024.

Before November 8th:

  • If enterprise owners do not set rules: Organization-level rules will continue to apply to all users across the enterprise, functioning as they do now, until November 8th.
  • If enterprise owners set a rule: Once enterprise-level rules are applied, organization-level rules will only apply to users who are assigned a Copilot seat from the organization where the rule is set.

After November 8th:

  • Organization-level rules will no longer apply enterprise-wide. They will be limited to users who are assigned a Copilot seat from the organization where the rule is set.
  • Enterprise owners can apply exclusion rules to all Copilot users in the enterprise.

After you add or change content exclusions, it can take up to 30 minutes to take effect in IDEs where the settings are already loaded. You can apply changes to your own IDE, forcing it to reload the content exclusion settings. For more information, see "Excluding content from GitHub Copilot."

Note

  • In Copilot Chat in Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio, content exclusions are not applied when you use the @github chat participant in your question.
  • It's possible that Copilot may use semantic information from an excluded file if the information is provided by the IDE in a non-excluded file. Examples of such content include type information and hover-over definitions for symbols used in code.

Error: "GitHub Copilot could not connect to server. Extension activation failed"

This error indicates that you do not have a GitHub Copilot subscription, or there was an error connecting to the GitHub API to request a token to use GitHub Copilot.

To request another token from api.github.com, try signing in and out of GitHub Copilot from your IDE. Once you've logged out, GitHub Copilot will prompt you to sign back in.

If you cannot connect to the server, you can create a discussion in our discussion forum. You can include log files from your IDE to help us troubleshoot the issue. For more information on obtaining log files from your specific IDE, see "Viewing logs for GitHub Copilot in your environment."

GitHub Copilot not suggesting multiple lines of code

This is a known issue and our team is working towards a fix. For more information, see this comment on a GitHub Community discussion.

Further reading