How to Disable GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio

Updated on:

April 6, 2026

By:

Madhav Bhandari

Use this interactive demo to learn how to disable GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio.

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Here’s the correct and up‑to‑date way to disable GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio, here’s how to do it:

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Open your Visual Studio account and click the gear icon in the bottom left.
Select 'Extensions" to see what's installed and enabled.
Find "GitHub Copilot" in the list, then click the gear icon next to it to access settings.
Hit "Disable" to turn off GitHub Copilot. You can re-enable it anytime from the same menu.

📌 Why this matters

You might want to disable Copilot when working on proprietary code where AI suggestions could create intellectual property concerns, or when learning new concepts where auto-completion prevents you from building muscle memory.

Some developers also find the constant suggestions distracting during focused debugging sessions or when pair programming with colleagues who prefer writing code from scratch. Temporarily turning it off lets you code without assistance when you need to demonstrate your raw programming skills or work in environments with strict code review policies.

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