Visual Studio Codespaces officially retired on , consolidating its features into GitHub Codespaces . Microsoft made this move to simplify the developer experience by providing a native, "one-click" workflow directly within the GitHub platform where most code already resides. Key Transition Timeline
The migration followed a phased decommissioning of the Azure-based service:
The Visual Studio Codespaces portal was fully retired, and all remaining data was deleted. Major Differences and Improvements Visual Studio Codespaces is moving to GitHub
While both services share the same underlying technology—VS Code running on Linux—the move to GitHub introduced several shifts:
The service became read-only; users could no longer create new plans or codespaces. Major Differences and Improvements While both services share
Because environments were not automatically transferred, developers had to manually move their work:
The original Azure offering allowed for more granular manual control over instance sizes at creation, a feature that was later streamlined in the GitHub implementation . How to Migrate Code Visual Studio Codespaces officially retired on
GitHub Codespaces initially defaults to the light GitHub theme, whereas the original service used the VS Code "Dark+" default.