Copilot & VSCode with Multiple Accounts

[bbatsche]

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I have two GitHub accounts. There is my personal GitHub account which is what I use for virtually all day to day tasks, and there is my enterprise GitHub account which has access to Copilot. If I were to initially launch VSCode I can authenticate the extensions in a careful order such that the Copilot extension uses my enterprise account, and the other extensions & setting sync use my personal account. However, on subsequent launches of VSCode it appears that only authentication for my personal account is used and the Copilot extension fails. I then have to sign out of GitHub from VSCode and repeat the sign in process again, being careful of the order again.

Is there some way for me to explicitly tell the Copilot extension to use a particular GitHub account, separate from my other extensions?

[Akash1134]

Hi @bbatsche ,

Thanks for highlighting this - I've shared this feedback with my team internally.

[testacode]

Not working for me, I would like to be able to login to my work account for github and my personal github account for copilot. My job doesn't pay me for copilot, I'm paying it myself so I don't want to be paying copilot for the work account.

[karamanolev]

This seems like a completely reasonable workflow and is also an issue for me. Please find a reasonable way to get it resolved.

[KidiIT]

Hello @bbatsche,
I’ve a good solution to this, sorry for being inactive lately and I’m trying to get back to my normal schedule. To start with, this issue seems so serious to be but on my end, I’ve not experienced such issues before. I’ve three GitHub accounts. One for personal, one enterprise and one organization account.
I know this issues is a general one. However, I’m going to try my best to share with y’all what I think and from my experience should be the solution to this.
Furthermore, you can simply solve the issue by firstly making sure your vscode is properly syn with the right extension on your editor. For instance, I’ll share a screenshot below which I saw here but I’ll make some few corrections on it. Secondly if you’ve multiple accounts here’s what to do to remotely connect your accounts to the copilot extension on vscode.

In reference to the screenshot, you’ll see:

1. Turn on cloud changes
2. Turn on remote Tunnel Access
   Please these are the two most important things you should know as a developer using copilot software. Why are you using such features? This will enable the copilot to understand and occasionally perform any tasks you want from your personal account
   And all your accounts will be linked to your personal account.You can check out my profile and see a quick example of that. This doesn’t stop your copilot to focus some projects and leave others. That’s a NO because once properly linked your copilot will attend to all repositories that connect to your project or personal accounts.

• please note: connecting your three or two GitHub accounts to your vscode will be very hard to tell the copilot when, how and which account to switch on. That’s why you’ve to use the remote settings. And make sure you already have your codeQL set up to enable your workflow to be updated and keep your project or repository running.
  if I’m given the opportunity to advise on this particular issue. From my own perspective, I’ll advise to keep or look up for the remote settings on vscode and how it works. This will enable you to understand how collaborative copilot can be when it comes to vscode.
  please feel free to tag me or reach out for further assistance and explanation for the community to understand and support other developers. @KidiIT

thank you for listening and happy coding from KIDI’S TECH your friend🫶❤️

[aryothaz]

How come this is still an issue? Can you please fix this? It's a pain in the ass to sign in each time with the described method... just let me select the account i have with copilot!

[GuiMend]

Not ideal, but fixes the problem:

• VS code is updated (current Version: 1.87.2 (Universal))
• Install this specific version of GitHub Copilot v1.161.0 (There may be a more recent version that works, but this one is stable)

I'm already logged in with both accounts, and this worked without losing any configs or having to log out and log back in.

[kaioker]

can confirm same issue. any updates on this?

[raphael-theriault-swi]

Just chiming in to note that this used to work fine in the past, only ran into the issue after having to reinstall VSCode

[sinaebrahimi]

Hi,

Is this issue resolved?

[arash-cid]

no

[sinaebrahimi]

Thanks

[supuna97]

Login with your enterprise GitHub account and try again. And also check your GitHub configurations.

[FrancoRueta]

Found a good solution for this issue!

Click on the accounts avatar at the left-bottom of the vscode

you should see the account without copilot permissions in here, so click on it and select "Manage Trusted Extensions"

And there, deselect github copilot, close VSCode, open up again and now when prompted by copilot to sign in with your account you add your account with permissions, so VSCode will keep using your main git account and will use the other one only for copilot! :)

[VILLAN3LL3]

Same here. Working with two github accounts where one of them has copilot access worked fine until the latest vs code updates. now copilot access is selected for both github accounts and I am not able to deselect it. The result is that I cannot use copilot anymore because it says that the github account has no copilot license...

[sumanth-deepcraft]

Any solution for this problem?

[alvdef]

has this been solved?

[itemsCenter]

still not resolved, been having this issue for more than a month now on lts vscode versions, pls fix asap!still not resolved, been having this issue for more than a month now on lts vscode versions, pls fix asap!

[hros]

I am also facing the "trusted by Microsoft" issue

have you managed to get around the issue and let Copilot use the enterprise GitHub account?

[kmchmk]

This is working for me now. What happened was, I gave up using multiple accounts and thought of using the same account for GitHub Copilot and GitHub Settings Sync. So I signed in to one account for both from the bottom left profile icon. After that, when I committed and pushed a change (using HTTPS of course), it said, VS Code needs to connect to GitHub using browser. Then I connected my other account.
Now I can see two accounts connected in bottom left corner and everything is working as expected for few weeks now. However I'm not sure which account is used to sync my VS Code settings now.

[auricgoldfinger]

Does it remain this way after you restart VSCode?

[bvadnai]

It did for a while. Lately, it's been throwing the "your subscription has ended" warning whenever I open a new VSCode window (not even the app!)

[spetrow]

Just wanted to note that if you can't see the gear and account icons, go to View -> Appearance -> Activity Bar. It took me far too long to figure this out. Why is this menu not on the Copilor status indicator on the status bar? The only option there is disable / enable the extension. The UX of signing out of an account with expired Copilot and into another account with active Copilot is terrible at the moment with multiple VSCode restarts and in-browser re-authorizations .

[cdjambovyourbteam]

Had the same problem.
What worked for me was to logout from all accounts and first log in in the account for the Copilot, then the other one. And now I am good. It would really be more easy if there is a setting in the Copilot settings to specify the account name to use (or some other id linked to the account).

[slabua]

@cdjambovyourbteam have you restarted vscode afterwards?

[cdjambovyourbteam]

Logged out, restarted, logged in, and do not remember if restarted (guess not).

[slabua]

To me upon relaunch, vscode remembers only the second account I had previously logged in.

[cdjambovyourbteam]

First Logout from all accounts. Relaunch. Then first do the CoPilot one, then the other. Even if it only remembers other account you still have the option to pick another one as the VSCode does Auth through browser.

[slabua]

I have done that, and every time vscode is relaunched, it only remembers the second account.
Of course I can login in the correct sequence every time I launch vscode and it works fine as long as I don't close it, but who would want to login every time the launch vscode.

[reslleygabriel]

Same problema here, I tried using the vscode profiles option, but it also doesn't allow multiple copilot accounts...

[gowerc]

I have the same problem, have a personal account that I use for literally everything and an Enterprise account thats sole existence is to have the copilot licence. This issue makes using copilot basically impossible unless I want the hassle of having to log into each account every time I restart vscode :(

[slabua]

Like someone else said, the only solution appears to be using one github account and one microsoft account.

[yousifalsaif]

This sounds like a prime example for a “multi account/per extension account” extension for the vs code marketplace.

[partishock]

This problem is still ongoing

[kasajian]

We need a way to configure the CoPilot extension to use a different GitHub account than the account used by VS Code for other things such as sync'ing. They're not going to be the same.

I use my personal account for sync'ing, but I want to use my corporate enterprise account for CoPilot because the company I work for pays for it. Currently, I cannot use CoPilot VSCode for this reason, although this works fine in Visual Studio.

[vernou]

@kasajian , I try to do this in Visual Studio. Can you explain how use a account to sync and a other account to Copilot?

[yawumi]

Goodness, why can't such a basic function be supported? The user experience is so terrible.

[inoa-dmpassy]

Ok, I just cancelled my copilot subscription, not being able to use other extensions due to this limit makes it not worth it.

I'd gladly subscribe again when this feature become available

[NurselIdil]

Still not fixed, wake up Github!

[KennyLindahl]

Still not fixed.
I tried to set up multiple profiles, but that didn't work because if you log out of one account on one profile, it will be logged out for all profiles.

Is this acceptable for paying customers? @ashtom

[abdulghanitech]

The problem is still not fixed. Any update on this? it's frustrating to keep switching profiles, logging out and logging in hoping that copilot will work this time. Please fix this as soon as possible. Thanks!

[KeithT]

This still does not work, I have a paid subscription to Copilot that I can't get to work in VSCode, after numerous attempts and different approaches. It works with Visual Studio however. There is some weird interaction with Github desktop which seems to not completely log out of the account used for commits, and will not let me login as the account with the Copilot subscription.
Why is there not a simple "Sign in" on the VSCode Copilot, there is a "Sign up" when it warns there is no access.
The ability to login is pretty basic and this issue has been going on for months on a paid service.

[BenNg-KSO]

Just for awareness, VS Code Dev made this comment on this issue.

TLDR: They confirm that VS Code officially only supports 1 account but intend to support multi accounts. But when and how is up in the air. Recommended workaround is using VS Code + VS Code insider side by side for your multi account usage.

[timreach]

This is the most substantial information there's been on this subject in this whole thread thank you for sharing.

[KingPsychopath]

Best answer, thank you. Wish this was months or even a year ago and we had a working solution right now.

[Akash1134]

We wanted to update you on the progress of this issue.

The work to enable multiple GitHub account login support in Copilot and VSCode has been completed, and the issue is now resolved. However, given the limited time for thorough testing, we’ve opted not to enable it by default in the upcoming Stable release next week.

We’ll continue tracking the rollout of this feature in a follow-up issue, #229421.

In the meantime, after the release of version 1.94, you can manually enable this feature by adding the following setting to your configuration:

"github.experimental.multipleAccounts": true

We appreciate your patience and look forward to your feedback as you test this functionality!

[mannfuri]

After multiple login and logout attempts, It seems that multiple accounts can be used normally now.

[dogacancolak]

What do we do after adding the setting to the config? I still don't see a way to add multiple accounts.

[smiling-watermelon]

@dogacancolak, go to Accounts in bottom left, select the account you want to use with a certain github extension (Like PRs or Copilot), and put your mouse on the ⚙️ emoji on the right side of that extension. After that - select the account you want to use.

I guess you'll have to restart the app for changes to apply properly.

[chr7]

You have to turn it on first with github.experimental.multipleAccounts from the settings.

[MarcoCaspers]

I did not investigate if any of this is actually possible as a plugin, but since this problem has been going on for over year without a solution in sight, i have been thinking on formally defining the problem and how a solution for it would need to look like.

Please note this is my personal take on what the cause of the problem is, it may not reflect what others are experiencing.

Feel free to discuss and add to this, please stay nice. It's just a wild idea.
I think it's far more fun than constantly reading seeing new reactions like: 'i have this problem too', 'i need this problem solved', 'it's still not solved', and in the end, it might spark some ideas and who knows what we will have in another year's time?
Those are needed to keep the thread alive, but in the end, i think that defining a soltion as clearly and as complete as possible can turn out to be more productive and can lead to a formal feature request that is well thought out and covers most if not all the needs of all people involved. Having been discussed here possibly also resolves the issue that for a feature request to be considered by Microsoft it has to be supported by a significant amount of people within a fairly limited timeframe.

Note:
I use account and user account interchangeably. They mean the same thing whicever way i name it.

Example:
Plugin 1: GitHub Repositories
Plugin 2: GitHub Copilot

Premise:
You have 2 different GitHub accounts: 'Account A' and 'Account B'
On 'Account A' you have a subscription for GitHub Copilot.
On 'Account B' with different features enabled. This account is required for commiting code to github.

Problem:
Visual Studio Code 1.88.1 and earlier can only use a single account for all plugins.
There is not enough control over user account usage.

Solution:
A plugin that takes control of user account handling functions that can be configured to use a specific account per plugin.

Requirements:

• Retrieve a list of all user accounts in VS Code ( * )

• Retrieve a list of all installed plugins ( * )
  ( * ) This needed is for initial setup only.
  For each installed plugin it's needed to determine if it requires user account interactions or not.
  If it does, pre-populate a plugin and user account association entry in a list in the configuration.

• A VS Code event handler for a new plugin that has been installed.

  • The handler needs to be able to determine if the newly installed plugin requires user account interactions.
  • If user account interaction is required:
    • Prompt for a user account to be used with this plugin, or allow to create a new account.
    • Generate a new plugin and account association entry in the list in the configuration.

• A VS Code event handler a plugin that has been uninstalled.

  • Remove plugin and account association from the list if it exists. (Configurable?)

• A VS Code event handler that is triggered by a plugin requesting authorization (i.e. account is logged in).

  • Provide the user account from the plugin and user account association configuration if it exists.
  • Prompt for a user account to be used for the plugin, and/or allow for new account creation.
    In the event the association didn't exist before allow it to be stored.

• A Configuration Manager with the following functions:

  • Select a default account to be used for new plugins.

  • Create a new user account.

  • Read existing user accounts. (list).

  • Update existing user account.

  • Delete existing user account.

  • Create a new plugin and account association.
    Selectable from dropdown lists or listboxes. Only list those plugins that require user accounts.

  • Read existing plugin and account associations.

  • Update plugin and account associations including the option to create a new account for the plugin.

  • Delete plugin and account association.

  • Selection:
    1). Use default account for newly installed plugins.
    2). Prompt for using an existing account or creating a new one for newly installed plugins.
    3). Both 1 + 2, with an accept button to accept the default.
    4). Require to always provide login credentials.

[tmax22]

you are all missing the point, it is possible to use different extensions with different accounts. the problem is, for some reason, the 'Github' extension groups both github, and copilot together, so it looks like you must use the same account for both github and copliot

by the way, any of you know why the checkout is grayed out? is was not the case a year ago if i remember right.

see how I was able to work around this issue:

• first login into your copliot account and link this account to this account.
• download Gitlens extension.
  • connect to the github account into gitlens by clicking
    
• now you have 2 accounts, one for copilot(and native git extension), and another account connect to github by using Gitlens.

hopefully, github would disable the coupling between copilot and github so you could connect to different accounts in each of these extensions.

[Sof2222]

It wasnt coupled until an update a few months ago where all of a sudden they could not be used seperatly. Before then it was working fine with 2 seperate accounts (had used it for like 8 months like that before some update stopped it working).
Not sure why they would do this as there is clearly a lot of people who require this use case

[philcampeau]

It could very well have to do with license abuse. One person buying a license on a dummy account and sharing the account info with 10 friends/colleagues.

[kasajian]

The issue to me has to do with the sync'ing. I want to be able to sync my configuration across different installations of VSCode. There's nothing "github" about this other than the fact that I happen to be signing into github. Sync'ing VSCode configurations doesn't and shouldn't technically need any information from any of my repositories, etc. It's just needs storage somewhere to store the configuration settings. I could be dropbox or onedrive. It happens to be a gist I think which requires github authentication.

I use my personal account for sync'ing, and have for years. Now my work has given me access to Github CoPilot. I can't use it with VSCode because it requires that I use my work account with VSCode.

So for now I am only using copolit with regular Visual Studio. Until VSCode catches up.

[MarcoCaspers]

It could very well have to do with license abuse. One person buying a license on a dummy account and sharing the account info with 10 friends/colleagues.

That risk exists always, you don't need multiple accounts for this.
If that were the thought, it's only gimping legitimate use and never preventing the illegitimate.

[lucastoll]

if your problem is logging in to copilot on one github account and having to commit by other github account (business account)

you could:

• login vscode in the copilot account
• close vscode, open a terminal and login to git

this way, you use copilot on vscode with one account and commit/push via terminal with another acount

this solved it for me

[MarcoCaspers]

This is basically what i do, but without closing vscode.
However originally the issue is that we want to use vscode for both accounts, one using github plugins to submit or do whatever with github for a code repo, and using another (personal account in my case) for copilot.

[Sof2222]

So it seems as though they have just made this worse... Was using the terminal to logon to git to push/pull and the extention to use copilot, but now it will not let me push or pull in vs code without being logged into the correct github account... I can get around it by logging in every single time, but it is requiring me to logon properly through the extention...
Anyone else got this issue? Just started today for me (and was working fine with the terminal/git split before - note I use the source control pannel in vs code)

[kmchmk]

Use SSH remote URL instead of HTTPS.

[MetaMmodern]

This is only for Copilot Chat!

Just updated Copilot to latest version(v1.200.0): on the first run it asked me to choose the account from which I want to sign in into Copilot chat. Didn't have a chance to screenshot it though.
Does it fix the original issue though?

upd: found this in settings, but there's no "Sign out" option :)

Annnother update, we're so back now, guys! You can now choose the account to use with Copilot in VSCode settings page!

Just checked how it works: you just type in one of the accounts listed in your profile menu, hit enter and copilot chat refreshes on it's own showing the correct chat with the correct user(if you have copilot on both for example). Not very intuitive to be honest, but works perfectly! And you can select an account per workspace, nice! Kuddos to Copilot extension team, you're great and thank youuuu!

[KingPsychopath]

Wooooo!! LGTM 🚀

[al-rigazzi]

Works for Copilot Chat, but not for Copilot, too bad...

[jchamale]

Working for me! I logged out of all Github accounts then logged in with my account in Github Actions/Github Pull Request extension, then logged in the other account into Github Chat and Github Copilot.

[Davis-3450]

Jesus Christ, finally
I'll add my main acc again xd

[Lzyct]

It's only for Copilot chat, not the main Copilot 🥲

[Arelav]

Looks like github.copilot.preferredAccount was removed. I managed some how to make it work spending about 15 minutes to log in and log out using a different combinations of account used for settings sync, copilot and GH pull requests extension.
It's just not elegant solution to login separately into all GH add-ons, especially when VSCode and GitHub owned by the same company.
How it should look like for my opinion: is to be able log in in VSCode into one or more accounts and for each extension to have an option to use the default or if it's more than one to have ability to select another account.