GitHub Copilot Just Stopped Being a VS Code Thing
Two days, two IDEs that don't belong to Microsoft. On 3 November 2026 GitHub announced Copilot as a selectable agent in JetBrains Air, and on 4 November it announced Copilot inside Xcode's own coding assistant. I've spent years thinking of Copilot as a VS Code thing with a few extensions bolted on elsewhere. That framing just broke. This isn't a new model or a pricing change. It's a distribution…
On November 3, 2026, GitHub made Copilot available in JetBrains Air, and on November 4, it expanded Copilot to Xcode's built-in coding assistant. This distribution change alters the way developers interact with the AI coding assistant. Xcode 27.3 beta, released on November 3, includes the Copilot assistant, which requires macOS Tahoe 26.6 or later.
Users can enable the assistant in Xcode's Settings > Intelligence. The built-in version offers a cleaner experience with no separate extension or sign-in process, while the extension remains as a separate option. JetBrains users can select Copilot as an agent in JetBrains Air's agent picker, with two modes: local runs in the IDE and cloud runs through Air Teams.
Cloud tasks bill against a user's Copilot plan, not JetBrains AI credits. Both announcements come with caveats, such as the Xcode 27.3 beta being unstable and JetBrains Air analytics not including Copilot usage. Developers are advised to test the new features before fully integrating them into their workflows.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
