Copilot Monthly Digest : April Edition

[Akash1134]

🚀 April 2025 Copilot Roundup

👋 Hello Community! As spring blooms with fresh possibilities, GitHub Copilot has been growing just as quickly! April has been a landmark month for AI-powered development with exciting new features, powerful models, and community advancements. Let's dive into what's been happening in the Copilot ecosystem this month.

This month in

• Copilot Pro+ Launched! – A new premium tier with access to the latest models (including GPT-4.5), priority preview access, and 1500 premium requests monthly. Learn more.
• Agent Mode Goes Mainstream – Now available to all VS Code users, with support for MCP (Model Context Protocol), enabling truly agentic interactions. Read the announcement.
• Code Review Bot Goes Official – "It works on my machine" no more! Our code review agent has graduated from beta with flying colors, already helping over devs catch bugs before they bite. Now with C, C++, Kotlin, and Swift support! Let the robot find your bugs.
• Eclipse ❤️ Copilot Chat – Eclipse fans, your patience has paid off! Full-featured Copilot Chat is now officially at your service. Eclipse users rejoice here.
• Next-Generation Models Added – A major expansion of model options with OpenAI's GPT-4.1, o3, o4-mini, Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro now available. Model details.
• Shareable Conversations – You can now share your Copilot chat sessions via links instead of screenshots. Check it out.
• Commit Message Generation – GitHub Desktop now offers AI-generated commit messages to streamline your workflow. Try it now.
• Picture This: Vision in More Models – Your screenshots and diagrams are now fair game for Claude and Gemini models in VS Code, Visual Studio, and github.com. Show, don't just tell! See for yourself.
• Organization Custom Instructions – Copilot Enterprise customers can now set default instructions for all users in their organization, ensuring consistent experiences. See details.

✨ Spotlight: New & Improved Copilot Category

This month, we're celebrating our own community milestone – the redesigned Copilot category in GitHub Community! As announced on April 17th, the Copilot category has evolved with:

• Two Specialized Sub-categories – "💬 Copilot Conversations" for questions and discussions and "🗞️ Copilot News and Announcements" (You're here 🧷 ) for official updates.
• Enhanced Templates – More intuitive discussion forms with built-in resources to help you get answers faster.
• Smart Auto-Labeling – Posts are automatically tagged with appropriate labels based on their content, ensuring your thread reaches the right team.
• Streamlined Navigation – New labels cover specific Copilot areas like "Copilot in GitHub," "Copilot Workspace," "Agent Mode," and more.

What makes this update particularly special? I built the entire experience using Copilot itself – a true testament to the power of AI-assisted development! AI helping us build better spaces to talk about AI 😄

Wait, have you spotted our shiny new category logo? It's so sleek I can't stop using it everywhere! ✨

📚 Noteworthy Reads

• A Guide to Deciding What AI Model to Use in GitHub Copilot – Deep insights into choosing the right model for your specific tasks, with tips and tricks for optimal results.
• Zero to Hero: Landing Page in 30 Minutes – Watch an ordinary human build an extraordinary landing page in less time than it takes to order and receive a pizza. Agent mode for the win!
• What the Heck is MCP and Why is Everyone Talking About It? – An essential primer on the Model Context Protocol that's powering the next generation of AI developer tools.
• GitHub for Beginners: Building a REST API with Copilot – A comprehensive tutorial showing how newcomers can leverage Copilot to quickly build and understand REST APIs.
• Security Buddy System – Let Copilot be your security conscience, catching those vulnerable moments before they become embarrassing CVEs. Your security team will think you suddenly became an expert!
• Which AI Model Should I Use with GitHub Copilot? – Practical guidance on matching the right AI model to your specific development tasks and goals.

🔮 What's Next?

• Premium Requests Go Live on May 9th – Copilot Pro+ subscribers will get access to their 1500 monthly premium requests, unlocking the full potential of advanced models.
• Try a New Model – With so many new models available this month, challenge yourself to experiment with one you haven't used before.
• Join the Conversation – Share your Copilot experiences in our newly organized community spaces and help shape the future of AI-powered development.

Let us know which April Copilot feature you're most excited about in the comments below! Extra points for anyone who shares a Copilot success story 🚀

Happy coding! ✨

[ronlangeveld]

Regarding: Next-Generation Models Added – A major expansion of model options with OpenAI's GPT-4.1, o3, o4-mini, Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro now available.

Our admin enabled the use of these models in the Github account for the Intellij CoPilot plugin and they could be selected after that. With the recent updates however this option has disappeared and I cannot find any mention of these models being retracted from the plugin. For the VS Code plugin the models can still be selected.

[Akash1134]

Hi @ronlangeveld , We've not seen similar report of models disappearing after the update. Could you please specify the update your team installed? The IntelliJ plugin might have been updated to a version that temporarily removed these models for stability reasons. Also, note that some IDEs are behind VS Code in feature parity. This has been observed previously with model availability.

[ronlangeveld]

Hi @ronlangeveld , We've not seen similar report of models disappearing after the update. Could you please specify the update your team installed? The IntelliJ plugin might have been updated to a version that temporarily removed these models for stability reasons. Also, note that some IDEs are behind VS Code in feature parity. This has been observed previously with model availability.

Our admin enabled the use of the new models on the company account of Github CoPilot.

Specifics regarding the versions are included in a post i made here: microsoft/copilot-intellij-feedback#130

hi @eranmizrahi1 Can you try restart? and how about your VSCode's if you see those models

I have the same issue with the IntelliJ version of the plugin. The VS Code version works fine. The IntelliJ plugin worked fine when the models were enabled with GitHub Copilot 1.5.42-241

Ever since the updates on April 27th: GitHub Copilot 1.5.43-241 & GitHub Copilot 1.5.43-243
the new models can no longer be selected. Restarts don't help.

I uninstalled the recent version and downloaded the 1.5.42-241 version but the latter cannot be used due to:
"Plugin 'GitHub Copilot' (version '1.5.42-241') is not compatible with the current version of the IDE, because it requires build 242.* or older but the current build is IU-251.23774.435"

I used the wrong download. The old version 1.5.42-243 did succesfully restore the selection of the new models. The most recent version of the plugin however does not.

[PETAPAMENMESJJ]

Thrill ADVANCEMENTS all the way, exclusive and great impacts of Copilot.

[SteelBlueVision]

The top post needs to be updated:

🔮 What's Next?

Premium Requests Go Live on May 9th – Copilot Pro+ subscribers will get access to their 1500 monthly premium requests, unlocking the full potential of advanced models.

Update: The Go Live date has been moved from May 8th (May 9th??) to June 4th and combined across the various Copilot paid tiers to become the same date for all Copilot subscribers, regardless of their subscription plan.

All of the preceding date change info is based on the official about page update: About premium requests

..., as well as updates that were made overnight (as of the morning of May 8) to the official individual billing page: About billing for individual copilot plans