Annoying status bar icon flashes and wiggles on every character

[evanw]

Type: Bug

Steps to reproduce:

1. Type some characters in an empty document
2. The language status icon flashes on every character (specifically the one with id status.languageStatus):

annoying.bug.mov

I think this is new after the latest update, but I'm not sure what the old version was before I updated. This example is showing it happening with the Go extension enabled, but it also happens with the Go extension disabled (although it's slightly more tolerable because it only flashes but doesn't also wiggle).

VS Code version: Code 1.97.2 (e54c774, 2025-02-12T23:20:35.343Z)
OS version: Darwin arm64 23.6.0
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Apple M1 Pro (10 x 2400)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on 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 video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	3, 2, 2
Memory (System)	32.00GB (0.22GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id 64120cb7-798a-43c3-8fe9-f097096f3cc8
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions (1)

Extension	Author (truncated)	Version
go	gol	0.44.0

A/B Experiments

vsliv368cf:30146710
vspor879:30202332
vspor708:30202333
vspor363:30204092
vscod805:30301674
binariesv615:30325510
py29gd2263:31024239
c4g48928:30535728
azure-dev_surveyone:30548225
2i9eh265:30646982
962ge761:30959799
2e7ec940:31000449
pythontbext0:30879054
cppperfnew:31000557
dwnewjupyter:31046869
nativerepl2:31139839
pythonrstrctxt:31112756
nativeloc1:31192215
iacca1:31171482
5fd0e150:31155592
dwcopilot:31170013
stablechunks:31184530
6074i472:31201624
dwoutputs:31242946
customenabled:31241370
hdaa2157:31222309
copilot_t_ci:31222730
jda6j935:31233686
cp15370_t:31242499
copilothoveron:31245428

[xpeuvr327]

it seems like it's the html extension that tries to validate your code

[aeschli]

The built-in html extension does not validate.
But can you disable to 'go' extension to see if it's that one? If it is, please file an issue against go.

[evanw]

The built-in html extension does not validate. But can you disable to 'go' extension to see if it's that one? If it is, please file an issue against go.

The Go thing is irrelevant. That's why I said this in my initial post:

This example is showing it happening with the Go extension enabled, but it also happens with the Go extension disabled (although it's slightly more tolerable because it only flashes but doesn't also wiggle).

Here is it happening in a JavaScript file with all plugins disabled:

annoying.bug.mov

[jrieken]

This is from copilot and should be fixed in latest Insiders, but I let @hediet comment for clarity.

@evanw You might wanna try https://code.visualstudio.com/insiders/ - this is updated daily and used by the whole dev team, meaning papercuts like this are eliminated faster.

[hediet]

Thanks for reporting the issue!
It got already fixed in #241214, by debouncing the status indicator by 300ms.