Fix Auto-Approval for Terminal Commands in GitHub Copilot Settings Not Working as Expected

[iwangbowen]

Type: Bug

In GitHub Copilot settings, the "chat.tools.terminal.autoApprove" configuration is set as follows:

{
  "chat.tools.terminal.autoApprove": {
    "/.*/": true,
    "mvn": false
  }
}

This is intended to allow automatic execution for all commands except "mvn". However, during execution, some commands still require manual confirmation despite being configured for auto-approval. This inconsistency disrupts the workflow, as users expect non-mvn commands to run automatically without prompts.

VS Code version: Code - Insiders 1.104.0-insider (d1d3e55, 2025-09-09T04:29:25.960Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1340P (16 x 2189)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off trees_in_viz: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	63.64GB (28.24GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id 3df60e69-6e36-46e5-9b3d-020ce9a3ab01
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions (136)

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vsliveshare	ms-	1.0.5959
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[Tyriar]

There are a set of defaults that are disabled, you need to null them out by design if you want to do this. You can autocomplete chat.tools.terminal.autoApprove in your settings.json to see the set of defaults (comment out your existing setting first). I recommend against doing that though as it makes it so much easier to have your machine compromised if you get prompt injected.

[yanancai]

I am also facing the same issue. I've cleaned the config up to allow everything but remove related commands, but I am still getting pop ups for bash command. See below picture. And this chat session is a newly created session after I updated and saved the configs.

[donfiguerres]

Yanan Cai (@yanancai), I was having the same issues as you. I think it was caused by this issue which was resolved a few hours ago.

#261794

[Tyriar]

FYI coming in the upcoming version is the ability to turn off defaults if you so choose #272250:

"chat.tools.terminal.ignoreDefaultAutoApproveRules": true

This is experimental/subject to change.

[leecalcote]

Yes, please, Daniel Imms (@Tyriar).