GitHub Copilot is available for every single GitHub Developer! 

GitHub has made GitHub Copilot available to every single GitHub user on the planet, which allows you to get started discovering GitHub Copilot for free, right now! Here is how to get started and what you need to know.  

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered pair programming buddy that can help you write, review, understand code, and more! As it is available inside of coding editors as well as on github.com, it has the context of the code (or documentation, or tests, or anything else) that you are working on, and will start helping you out from there.  

GitHub Copilot For Free? 

Every GitHub user can now use GitHub Copilot for free with their account, with some limitations of course. You can get a free GitHub Copilot Personal license on your account (it is opt-in). This license comes with rate limits for its usage on a given day or month. These limits are plenty to test out the waters with GitHub Copilot and see how Generative AI can help you during your development activities. That means you can get a limited number of suggestions while you are typing, as well as a limited amount of chat turns in GitHub Copilot Chat or when using multi-file edits. 

What is GitHub Copilot? 

GitHub Copilot is a tool that will help you during your coding activities, whether it is writing code, documentation, or tests. You can see it as a pair programming buddy that will help you with your tasks. You can ask it questions about your code (e.g. “how can I compile this application and run it?"), or use it to explore new things (e.g. “convert this C# code into a Python script”), and even use it for improving the codebase (e.g. “how can I protect this method against security attacks?”).  

GitHub Copilot lets you converse with your code in natural language, which can even be your own native language. You can still write your code in English and ask questions in French for example. This opens coding to every person on the planet, as you do not have to know every coding trick in the book to be able to start coding. You do need an inquisitive mind and ask GitHub Copilot questions to understand the code or gain more insights into how a computer executes the code, and with that you can achieve a great deal. 

GitHub Copilot is an extension to several coding environments: 

• Visual Studio Code 
• Visual Studio 
• JetBrains IDE’s 
• NeoVim 
• Azure Data Studio 
• Xcode
  

It can also be used inside of github.com, GitHub Codespaces, as well as on GitHub Mobile. 

GitHub Copilot’s Primary Features 

GitHub Copilot has several features in most IDE’s that help you during coding: 

• Suggestions. These text predictions are generated while you are typing out new code. As soon as you stop and pause, GitHub Copilot shows a suggestion of what the next piece of code could be. Very helpful to complete your train of thought! You are the pilot and decide whether to accept the suggestion (done by hitting the ‘tab’ key) or continue typing. 
• Chat. This experience has its own separate panel in the editor that lets you ask questions on your code. It can be broad (“how can I improve the test setup?”) or narrower (“add a check to prevent division by zero errors to this code”). 
• Inline chat. This popup opens over your code so you can quickly ask your question there. Suggestions show up in your code as an inline diff, and you can accept or discard them. 
• Multi file edits. An expansion of the chat functionality that can work with multiple files at the same time. This allows you to be very specific and for example bring in a controller, an interface definition, code implementation, as well as your unit tests. Now you can instruct GitHub Copilot to add new functionality or properties to all these files in one go. 

Getting Started 

Here is how to get started with GitHub Copilot Personal: 

1. Go to your profile settings and GitHub Copilot. You can go there directly with this link: https://github.com/settings/copilot.  
2. Read the license agreement and opt-in to the GitHub Copilot Personal license 
3. Now you can use the GitHub Copilot features on github.com by clicking on the GitHub Copilot icon in the browser (top menu bar) 
4. Or install the GitHub Copilot + GitHub Copilot Chat extension(s) in your IDE:
   • Two extensions in Visual Studio Code, installing one will also install the other extension in one go
     
   • Optional feature in the workloads of Visual Studio 2022 
   • Single extension for JetBrains IDE’s 
   • NeoVim does not have chat support 
   • Single extension for Azure Data Studio 
   • Single extension for Xcode, chat is not supported

Diving Deeper 

Want to learn more about GitHub Copilot and get examples of more features that are available? Go to https://github-copilot.xebia.ms/ and look at the feature videos! You can find single features demos, deeper dives from power users, as well as a walkthrough on how to work with Generative AI and learn how to get better results out of GitHub Copilot….or go to the GitHub Copilot Holiday Advent Calendar.…

Xebia is helping developers understand GitHub Copilot and maximize its potential. During the holiday season we unveiled a new part of this GitHub gift daily, by sharing a short video highlighting a feature of GitHub Copilot!

Click here and take advantage of this downtime and level up your skills as an AI-powered engineer!

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How GitHub Copilot Free is a great thing for the whole world
Navigating the Enterprise Concerns of GitHub Copilot Free: Solutions for Safe and Compliant Use

Events
GitHub Copilot Hackathon | Feb 5th | in-person event | Hilversum, NL