Issue #155 (Voice Dictation)04/09/25
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There's an official VS Code extension from Microsoft called VS Code Speech that enables various voice-to-text features in VS Code. Among other things, you can enable voice dictation directly into your editor.
You can do this by running the command Voice: Start Dictation in Editor or by using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+V (or OPT-CMD-V on Mac).
This shows a small glowing microphone icon, indicating that voice dictation is now active. You can disable it using the ESC key or via the Voice: Stop Dictation in Editor command.
You can also use the keybinding to use voice dictation in "walkie-talkie" mode. This means you have to press and hold CTRL+ALT+V (or OPT-CMD-V on Mac). Dictation will be enabled for the duration of the hold.
Voice dictation is available in a number of different contexts, not just code editing. For example, it's available when writing commit messages or comments on pull requests.
And finally, voice dictation is available in other spoken languages as well. You can use the accessibility.voice.speechLanguage setting to choose your language. The default is whatever your OS's default display language is.
The VS Code docs say there are "26" languages available, but note that there are 7 variations of English, 3 variations of Chinese, 2 variations of French, and so on. So technically yes, there are 26, but there are currently about 14 major language "categories", for lack of a better word.
Now on to this week's hand-picked links!
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VS Code Tools
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Kilo Code — An open source AI agent VS Code extension that helps you write code more efficiently by generating code, automating tasks, and providing suggestions.
Copy4AI — A VS Code extension that allows you to easily copy file and folder contents along with the project tree structure to your clipboard, useful when working with LLMs and you need to provide context about your project.
Seven Point Sunday — Get 7 ideas every Sunday to build your career. Life hacks, passive income, AI prompts, book/music picks. From Kabir Sehgal, 16x Grammy winner and NYT bestselling author. Sponsor
comment-hide — A VS Code plugin that allows you to hide and show your code comments and saves them to a specified folder. See article link below for a detailed walk-through of its use.
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VS Code Theme of the Week
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Ocean Mist — A modern theme "inspired by the calming aqua color, designed for readability and focus." The extension's primary theme has an emphasis on the aqua shades in its syntax highlighting.
The extension also includes a theme called "Ocean Mist Light" (which I've displayed above) which is somewhat misleading because it's not a light theme but simply a theme that uses a dark background that's not as dark. It also doesn't use as many aqua hues in the syntax highlighting, but instead uses more aqua in the UI.
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VS Code Articles & Videos
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VS Code 1.99 (March 2025 Updates) — Lots of new stuff in the latest update to VS Code, as it approaches 2.0, including Agent Mode, improvements to AI edits, AI chat, and Notebook editing, and lots more.
Copilot Chat Users Can Now Use the Vision Input in VS Code and Visual Studio in Public Preview — From the GitHub blog, announcement on the ability to attach images to use them directly inside Copilot chat (via attachment, copy/paste, or drag/drop).
Brain Food, Delivered Daily — Every day Refind analyzes thousands of articles and sends you only the best, tailored to your interests. Loved by 527,190 curious minds. Sponsor
VS Code Plugin comment-hide: Dare to Write Comments! — A tutorial on using the VS Code plugin mentioned above, which supports four comment styles that are popular in a dozen or more languages.
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Best of the Rest
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Online Markdown — A new option for an online Markdown editor, with a GUI for easy Markdown syntax inclusion, a cheat sheet, on-screen stats (word count, characters, etc.), and a save to disk option.
MS Paint IDE — An older project, this is a windows app that can read a normal image file saved with MS Paint, and can then translate it to text with the ability to highlight the text in the image, parse the code, compile and execute it.
The AI Report — A daily newsletter that provides AI solutions you can use to work smarter and achieve results, trusted by AI experts at Apple, Microsoft, Nasa, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Sponsor
From QED to Neovim — A history and evolution of the digital text editor, from terminal-based editors to modern popular options like VS Code and Helix.
If you have any link suggestions, including a tool, article, or other resource related to VS Code or another IDE, you can hit reply, send it via DM on X, or via chat on Bluesky.
That's it for this issue.
Happy VS Coding!
Louis
VSCode.Email
@LouisLazaris
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