GitHub new features in August 2026

Everything GitHub shipped in August 2026: 70 releases, grouped by product, each linked to GitHub's release notes.

July 2026 September 2026

GA 21Preview 5Deprecation 6Pricing 3Update 35

GitHub Copilot35

GitHub CopilotAug 31, 2026

Copilot model access update for GitHub Team plans

We have updated how model access is determined for Copilot users who hold seats in more than one organization. To keep billing and governance in sync, your model access is now determined only by the organization paying for your usage.

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GitHub CopilotAug 31, 2026

GitHub Copilot in VS Code, August 2026 releases

This changelog covers VS Code v1.132 through v1.135 , shipped throughout August 2026. These releases make it easier to organize agent sessions, review changes, and navigate long conversations. Agent Host, the integrated browser, and dictation also get updates to support more ways of working in VS Code.

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GitHub CopilotAug 31, 2026

Selected GitHub Copilot models deprecated

As of today, September 1, 2026, we have deprecated the following models across most GitHub Copilot experiences (including Copilot Chat, inline edits, ask and agent modes, and code completions). Note that Claude Sonnet 4.6 is still available to individual GitHub Copilot subscribers on annual plans.

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GitHub CopilotAug 28, 2026

GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio , August update

August 2026 brought more control over how GitHub Copilot reasons, which models you use, how teams share specialized agents, and when you ask for a code review. Highlights Here’s what’s new with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026.

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GitHub CopilotAug 28, 2026

GitHub Copilot weekly releases , August 24

This week’s updates give you more control over how Copilot runs, from team sessions in Slack and Teams to customization across the app, CLI, and your IDE. GitHub Copilot in Slack and Microsoft Teams Turn team conversations into shared agent sessions.

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GitHub CopilotAug 28, 2026

Upcoming changes to GitHub Copilot policies and billing

To provide a strong, consistent Copilot experience, we’re making three separate, upcoming changes to Copilot policies and billing. Please review the upcoming updates to understand what may impact you.

PricingGovernancePricingDeveloper toolsSource

GitHub CopilotAug 27, 2026

Copilot code review: Resolution reasons and expanded capabilities

Copilot code review can now review two types of pull requests it didn’t cover before: Reviews requested automatically on pull requests authored by bots, including Copilot cloud agent Very large pull requests Additionally, you can now submit the reason for why you’re resolving a particular Copilot code review comment.

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GitHub CopilotAug 27, 2026

Enterprise-managed settings now support autoUpdate for plugin marketplaces

You can now opt individual plugin marketplaces into automatic updates by setting autoUpdate: true on an extraKnownMarketplaces entry in enterprise managed settings. Supported clients automatically check the marketplace and update installed plugins sourced from it, reducing manual maintenance for organization customizations.

GAObservabilityDeveloper toolsCoding agentsSource

GitHub CopilotAug 26, 2026

Global model policy generally available

In July, we announced a default model policy for generally available GitHub Copilot models on Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise plans. Starting today, we’re gradually rolling out enforcement of the policy through September 1, so it will take effect at different times for different enterprises.

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GitHub CopilotAug 25, 2026

Copilot harness generally available in Copilot for JetBrains

This update brings Copilot harness to generally availability. You also get more stable account, model, and MCP experiences. What’s new Copilot harness generally available Copilot harness is now generally available, providing faster feature delivery and better code quality.

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GitHub CopilotAug 25, 2026

GitHub Copilot app Customize tab is generally available

GitHub Copilot is more useful when it works with the tools, knowledge, and workflows your team already relies on. The new Customize tab in the GitHub Copilot app brings MCP servers, plugins, skills, and canvases together in one place. Explore featured customizations, browse by type, and find new ways to tailor Copilot to how you and your team work.

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GitHub CopilotAug 21, 2026

Shared agentic work with GitHub Copilot in Microsoft Teams

Turn a Microsoft Teams discussion into a collaborative agent session everyone can see and help direct. Mention @GitHub in a channel, thread, or direct message to start a GitHub Copilot cloud agent session. Anyone in the conversation can ask questions, add context, and help plan or steer the work.

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GitHub CopilotAug 21, 2026

The new GitHub Copilot experience in Slack

The GitHub integration in Slack now brings the agentic capabilities of GitHub Copilot CLI and the GitHub Copilot app into Slack in public preview. You can work with @GitHub to plan changes, investigate problems, and hand off coding tasks from the conversations where your team coordinates work.

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GitHub CopilotAug 18, 2026

Enterprise managed settings in GitHub Copilot for JetBrains

GitHub Copilot for JetBrains now supports enterprise managed settings for plugin governance, MCP server access, OpenTelemetry, and permission modes. Administrators can now apply consistent controls for everyone on your enterprise’s Copilot plan.

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GitHub CopilotAug 14, 2026

GitHub Copilot weekly releases , August 10

From new models and portable plugins to smoother agent workflows, this week’s updates make GitHub Copilot more flexible across editors, the command line, and the Copilot app. GitHub Copilot, general Kimi K3 is rolling out to Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business, and Enterprise plans.

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GitHub CopilotAug 14, 2026

Grok 4.6 is now available in GitHub Copilot

Grok 4.6, xAI’s latest reasoning model, is now rolling out in GitHub Copilot. It is designed for agentic coding and complex multi-step workflows. In our internal testing, Grok 4.6 showed strong results across terminal-based coding tasks in Visual Studio Code and Copilot CLI.

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GitHub CopilotAug 13, 2026

Gemini 3.7 Flash is now available in GitHub Copilot

Gemini 3.7 Flash, Google’s latest Flash model, is now rolling out in GitHub Copilot. From our early testing, the model has made improvements in web and app development and agentic coding workflows over it’s previous version.

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GitHub CopilotAug 12, 2026

Agent Plugins 1.0 in VS Code, Copilot CLI, and the Copilot app

You can now build a plugin once and use it across all compatible agent clients. We published Agent Plugins 1.0 on August 6 with AWS, Anysphere, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel. Google also joined as a core maintainer on the same day.

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GitHub CopilotAug 11, 2026

Copilot memory and Ollama in GitHub Copilot for JetBrains

This update brings persistent memory, local model access, and more enterprise controls to GitHub Copilot for JetBrains. It also improves everyday chat workflows and resolves reliability issues across MCP servers, terminals, customizations, and cloud agents.

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GitHub CopilotAug 11, 2026

MAI-Code-1.1-Flash available in GitHub Copilot

MAI-Code-1.1-Flash, Microsoft’s latest small-tier coding model, is now rolling out in GitHub Copilot. Building on MAI-Code-1-Flash, it adds native vision support for image understanding and delivers improvements across coding quality, instruction following, tool use, and performance.

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GitHub CopilotAug 11, 2026

Per-model token breakdown in the usage report

You can now see a per-model breakdown of the tokens behind your AI credits in the usage report. For each model, the AI usage report shows the input, output, cache read, and cache write tokens alongside the AI credits it consumed.

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GitHub CopilotAug 11, 2026

Upcoming deprecation of MAI-Code-1-Flash

With the launch of MAI-Code-1.1-Flash , we will deprecate MAI-Code-1-Flash across all GitHub Copilot experiences on September 10, 2026: Model Deprecation date Suggested alternative MAI-Code-1-Flash 9-10-2026 MAI-Code-1.1-Flash Please update your workflows and integrations to use the new model before September 10.

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GitHub CopilotAug 10, 2026

Copilot on web expands conversation controls

We’ve made improvements to Copilot Chat on github.com that make it easier to use. These include easier access to your recent conversations in chat, the ability to minimize the chat window and return to an in-progress conversation, and indicators that help you track your Copilot token spend.

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GitHub CopilotAug 7, 2026

Copilot code review effort levels are generally available

Lite and Balanced effort levels for GitHub Copilot code review are now generally available. They let you match the depth of a review to the complexity and risk of a pull request. Not every pull request needs the same scrutiny.

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GitHub CopilotAug 7, 2026

Copilot impact dashboard adds a return on investment section

The Copilot impact dashboard now includes a “Potential return on investment” section that connects what you spend on Copilot to the pull request output you get back.

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GitHub CopilotAug 7, 2026

Copilot usage metrics API adds agent app activity

Since agent apps arrived on GitHub, teams have been able to run agents from partners like Claude and Codex directly in their GitHub workflows. The Copilot usage metrics API now reports that activity, broken out by individual agent.

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GitHub CopilotAug 7, 2026

GitHub Code Quality no longer adds Copilot as a reviewer

Enabling GitHub Code Quality on a repository no longer creates a ruleset that automatically requests a code review from GitHub Copilot on your pull requests. In repositories that already have that ruleset, we’ve turned off the settings we enabled.

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GitHub CopilotAug 7, 2026

GitHub Copilot weekly releases , August 3

This week’s updates across GitHub Copilot in the desktop app, CLI, and VS Code help you resume and organize work, review changes, and ask questions without losing context. GitHub Copilot app Auto now shows which model handled each completed request, plus AI credit and cache details when they’re available.

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GitHub CopilotAug 7, 2026

MCP allowlists in enterprise managed settings

Enterprise owners can now centrally control which Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers GitHub Copilot clients are allowed to run by using the new allowedMcpServers and deniedMcpServers keys in enterprise managed settings. Approve the MCP servers your developers depend on and block untrusted or non-compliant ones across your enterprise.

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GitHub CopilotAug 6, 2026

Kimi K3 is now available in GitHub Copilot

Editor’s note (August 6, 2026): We have resumed rolling out Kimi K3 in GitHub Copilot. This model is billed at provider list pricing under usage-based billing. See GitHub Copilot’s pricing for models and requests for details. Editor’s note (August 6, 2026): We have temporarily paused the roll-out of Kimi K3 while we mitigate an incident with GitHub Actions.

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GitHub CopilotAug 4, 2026

Retiring the Copilot Billing Preview app

We’ve retired the GitHub Copilot Billing Preview app, and it’s no longer available. You can review and manage your Copilot spend directly in your GitHub billing settings. The app helped you understand your bill during the move to usage-based billing.

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GitHub CopilotAug 4, 2026

Upcoming deprecation of GitHub Spark on github.com

Beginning August 4, 2026, GitHub Spark no longer accepts new users or allows the creation of new apps. Existing users can continue to access GitHub Spark until August 31, 2026 to export apps they’ve already created. Apps you’ve already deployed will continue to work after GitHub Spark is retired.

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GitHub CopilotAug 3, 2026

Customize the reasoning level for Copilot cloud agent

When you delegate a task to GitHub Copilot cloud agent, you can now set the reasoning level for models that support it. This allows you to control how much the model reasons before it responds. A higher level can improve answers to complex problems, but it consumes more tokens, and therefore more credits.

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GitHub CopilotAug 3, 2026

Enterprise team specialization for managed settings

Enterprise administrators can now customize managed settings by targeting enterprise teams with itemized configuration files. Large enterprises can scale governance without bottlenecking every configuration change through central administrators or one-size-fits-all policies.

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GitHub CopilotAug 3, 2026

Trigger Copilot automations with comments

You can now create Copilot cloud agent automations that run when an issue comment or pull request comment is created. Common use cases include: Generate documentation : Comment on a pull request to automatically generate or update documentation based on your code changes.

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GitHub platform20

GitHub platformAug 27, 2026

Better label management on issues is generally available

We’re making it easier to keep labels organized and find the right one, especially in repositories with long and growing label lists. Suggested Labels You can now find the right label faster with suggestions based on what a repository has been using recently.

GAObservabilityPerformanceSource

GitHub platformAug 27, 2026

Close all open contributions authored by a blocked user

You can now automatically close all open issues, discussions, and pull requests authored by a user when you block them from your personal account or organization. To use this option, select Close content authored by this user in the block dialog.

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GitHub platformAug 27, 2026

GitHub Classroom deprecated

As of August 28, 2026, GitHub Classroom is now deprecated in favor of our selected partner solutions. The GitHub Classroom website, APIs, and related services have now been decommissioned. However, any GitHub user accounts, repositories, and organizations created to work with Classroom are not affected.

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GitHub platformAug 26, 2026

GitHub Apps can now access enterprise billing data

Enterprise owners can now grant a GitHub App access to enterprise billing data. When you create or configure a GitHub App, you can select the enterprise billing permission and choose one of two levels: read or read and write.

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GitHub platformAug 25, 2026

Push rules in rulesets now support path exceptions

You can now configure push rules more granularly by exempting specific file paths, so a rule applies everywhere in scope except the paths you choose. Path exceptions are in public preview. Push rules give you strong control over what enters a repository.

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GitHub platformAug 25, 2026

Rule insights dashboard generally available

The rule insights dashboard is now generally available at both the repository and organization levels. You get a visual, high-level view of how GitHub evaluates and enforces your GitHub repository rulesets, so you can spot trends and report on governance without stitching data together by hand.

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GitHub platformAug 21, 2026

Better tools for managing blocked users

Managing blocked users is now faster and clearer for personal accounts and organizations. With this update, you can: Search by username, full name, or email. Sort and paginate long lists. Filter by block reason (e.g., Spam , Misconduct , or Harassment ). Add private notes to preserve moderation context. View and edit block settings.

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GitHub platformAug 20, 2026

Pinning saved views to the repository issues sidebar is generally available and more

Pinning saved views to the repository issues sidebar You can now pin saved views ⁠ to the repository issues sidebar, making the views you use most just one click away, even when the sidebar is collapsed. Other Improvements You can now see profile avatars for reactions on issues.

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GitHub platformAug 14, 2026

Multiple redirect URIs and token refresh for OAuth apps

We’ve released multiple updates to the OAuth app and GitHub App platforms to support more secure app development: OAuth apps can opt in to expiring access tokens and refresh tokens. OAuth apps can have multiple redirect URIs. Both GitHub Apps and OAuth apps can enable wildcard matching for redirect URIs if needed.

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GitHub platformAug 13, 2026

Block users from comments in personal repositories

You can now block or unblock users directly from comments on pull requests and issues in repositories owned by personal GitHub accounts. To block or unblock a user: Open the More menu on their comment. Select Block user or Unblock user . Optionally add a private note explaining why you’re blocking the user. Confirm your selection.

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GitHub platformAug 12, 2026

Rule insights for organizations in public preview

The rule insights dashboard is now in public preview at the organization level. You get a visual, high-level view of how GitHub evaluates and enforces your GitHub repository rulesets, so you can spot trends and report on governance without stitching data together by hand.

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GitHub platformAug 11, 2026

Automatically migrate branch protection rules to repository rulesets

You can now convert your existing branch protection rules to repository rulesets directly from your repository settings. This helps you migrate to GitHub’s more flexible and scalable policy framework without manually recreating each rule.

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GitHub platformAug 11, 2026

GitHub Enterprise Server 3.22 release candidate

GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) 3.22 is now available and introduces new capabilities across the platform. Here are a few highlights in the 3.22 release: Administrators can configure Copilot CLI to work with GHES for enterprises that operate in disconnected or air-gapped environments without connectivity to GitHub Cloud.

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GitHub platformAug 10, 2026

Custom thread subscriptions are being deprecated

Update (August 14, 2026): Pausing the custom thread subscriptions deprecation We’re pausing the planned deprecation of custom thread subscriptions. Your feedback highlighted how integral this feature is to many developers’ notification workflows.

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GitHub platformAug 10, 2026

GitHub billing in India now supports automatic recurring payments

Customers in India can now use eligible saved credit cards for automatic recurring payments on monthly and annual GitHub bills. This update uses a payment mandate, also known in the payments industry as an electronic mandate, to authorize future charges in line with Reserve Bank of India requirements.

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GitHub platformAug 7, 2026

Enterprises can now install third-party GitHub Apps

Enterprise owners can now install public GitHub Apps created outside their enterprise on their enterprise account. This allows third-party integrators to build apps for enterprise management scenarios. Enterprise installations grant access to the enterprise account itself; they do not grant access to organizations or repositories in the enterprise.

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GitHub platformAug 7, 2026

“Relates to” issue relationship in public preview and multi-select fields is generally available

GitHub is making it easier to connect related work and manage multiple field values across issues and projects. Connect related issues The new “Relates to” issue relationship is available in public preview. You can connect two issues without implying that one blocks, duplicates, contains, or closes the other.

GAObservabilitySource

GitHub platformAug 6, 2026

Set pull request limits at the organization level

You can now set pull request limits at the organization level. Pull request limits let you define how many open pull requests a user without write access can have at one time. If a user reaches that limit, they must close or merge an existing pull request before opening another.

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GitHub platformAug 3, 2026

Migrate from GitLab to GitHub with GitHub Enterprise Importer

Migrations from gitlab.com and GitLab Self-Managed to GitHub Enterprise Cloud with GitHub Enterprise Importer (GEI) are now generally available. You can now self-serve these migrations using GEI and the gh gl2gh command-line extension.

GAObservabilitySource

GitHub platformAug 3, 2026

Triage role can bypass issue creation restrictions

If your repository restricts issue creation to collaborators only, users with the triage role can now create issues. Previously, the restricted setting only allowed users with write access to create issues. With this update, trusted contributors with the triage role are also included.

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GitHub Advanced Security11

GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 25, 2026

Block users directly from security advisories

You can now block a user directly from a security advisory page in public repositories owned by either an organization or a personal account. This brings the streamlined moderation experience available for issues and pull requests to security advisories.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 20, 2026

Code scanning adds a mitigated alert dismissal reason

You can now dismiss a code scanning alert with the reason Mitigated when a vulnerability remains in the code but external controls, such as a web application firewall or network policy, mitigate its risk.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 20, 2026

Track GitHub Code Quality enablement changes in the audit log

GitHub Code Quality now writes an audit log event whenever someone enables, disables, or changes its settings on a repository. Three new events give you that history: repo.code_quality_enabled records when someone turns on Code Quality for a repository. repo.code_quality_disabled records when someone turns it off.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 19, 2026

Track organization code quality trends

The organization-level Code Quality dashboard now includes a Trends tab that shows how code quality has changed across your repositories over time. Instead of a point-in-time snapshot, you can see whether open findings are trending up or down and which repositories are driving the change.

GAPricingBIObservabilitySource

GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 18, 2026

Credential revocation and deauthorization by token type

Building on our self-service credential revocation experiences for incident response, you can now take token-type and user-specific actions to deauthorize and revoke user credentials during a security incident. This gives you finer-grained control when responding to a compromise.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 13, 2026

License data quality improvements

GitHub now uses package registries like npmjs.org and PyPI to determine license information for software components in the dependency graph. This improves the accuracy and completeness of the licenses shown in dependency insights, software bills of materials (SBOMs), the open source license compliance feature in GitHub Advanced Security, and the dependency...

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 7, 2026

Secret scanning coverage updates

This release expands secret scanning’s coverage with more secrets blocked by push protection, one new secret scanning partner, and richer metadata on alerts. Secret scanning partnership program Lovable Labs is now a GitHub secret scanning partner. Secret scanning now automatically detects the following new secret type in your repositories.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 4, 2026

Code coverage automatic enablement in Code Quality settings

We’re making code coverage setup faster and simpler. You’ll now see a new option in your repository’s Code Quality settings that lets GitHub generate your coverage workflow automatically with AI. We’ll open a pull request so you can review the changes before you merge them. Setting up code coverage has traditionally felt disconnected and manual.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 4, 2026

CodeQL 2.26.2 adds Swift 6.3.3 and Kotlin 2.4.10 support

CodeQL is the static analysis engine behind GitHub code scanning, which finds and remediates security issues in your code. We’ve recently released CodeQL 2.26.2, which adds support for Swift 6.3.3 and Kotlin 2.4.10, and improves the accuracy of path injection, URL redirection, and GitHub Actions queries.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 4, 2026

Customize Dependabot pull request branch names

You can now customize the branch names Dependabot creates for pull requests. New pull-request-branch-name options in .github/dependabot.yml let you set a prefix and maximum length, choose segment and word separators, set letter case, or define a custom template using placeholders.

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GitHub Advanced SecurityAug 4, 2026

Customize code scanning default setup at scale

You can now apply your own configuration file to code scanning default setup, using the new github-codeql-config-file repository property. This gives you control over how CodeQL scans your code for security vulnerabilities, whether that’s on one repository or across your whole organization.

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GitHub Actions4

GitHub ActionsAug 27, 2026

Actions retention will cover checks, workflow runs, and statuses

Starting October 1, 2026, checks, workflow runs, and statuses will be governed by the same Actions retention setting that already controls how long artifacts and logs are kept, with a default of 90 days. Until now, checks, workflow runs, and statuses were retained for 400+ days regardless of your retention configuration.

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GitHub ActionsAug 20, 2026

Separate GitHub Actions path for GitHub Code Quality

A dedicated workflow path for code quality CodeQL actions workflows is now generally available. Your workflow run history and your Actions usage reports now tell GitHub Code Quality runs apart from GitHub code scanning runs.

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GitHub ActionsAug 20, 2026

Windows 11 arm64 VS2026 image generally available

The Windows 11 arm64 image with Visual Studio 2026 is now generally available on standard and larger GitHub-hosted runners. To use it in GitHub Actions, update your workflow file to runs-on: windows-11-vs2026-arm .

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GitHub ActionsAug 19, 2026

CodeQL 2.26.3 improves GitHub Actions queries and JavaScript modeling

CodeQL 2.26.3 adds JavaScript, TypeScript, and Vue source modeling and improves the accuracy of several GitHub Actions queries. CodeQL is the static analysis engine behind GitHub code scanning , which helps you find and remediate security issues in your code.

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