GitHub / github.blog GitHub Copilot CLI 1.0.52 and 1.0.53: Context Window Tiers Work Now, Sessions Resume Smarter
Copilot CLI 1.0.52 ships on May 23 with a context window tier fix that actually enforces the 200K vs 1M selection end-to-end, session resume in saved directories, and log file pruning. Version 1.0.53 the next day fixes multiline prompt display and a Bash hang.
GitHub shipped Copilot CLI versions 1.0.52 and 1.0.53 on May 23 and 24, following last week’s 1.0.51. Neither release carries a flagship feature, but both fix issues that users have reported consistently since the GA release in February.
Context window tier selection actually works now
The biggest fix in 1.0.52 is in context window management. Copilot CLI lets you choose between two context tiers — roughly 200K tokens and 1M tokens. In previous versions, making that selection in the UI had limited effect: compaction, truncation, and the token display didn’t always respect it.
1.0.52 enforces the tier end-to-end. Picking a tier now constrains how the CLI compacts history, when it truncates, and what the usage display shows. Choosing 200K means the session will stay at 200K. The discrepancy between what you selected and what the CLI actually did has been a quiet source of unexpected token costs and context loss.
Session resume improvements
copilot --continue from a session’s saved directory now refreshes the saved branch and git context instead of carrying over stale state. If you started a session in a branch, switched branches, and then resumed, the resumed session now picks up where the working directory actually is.
Sessions also resume in their saved working directory by default. If you need to override, pass -C with the path you want.
Autopilot permission prompts fixed
Switching to Autopilot mode used to sometimes trigger unexpected permission prompts for tool access, path access, or URL access. These have been corrected. The permission system was evaluating requests against the new mode before the mode switch was fully applied.
Non-interactive subcommands no longer block on stdin
Subcommands like plugin list, mcp list, help, and version previously consumed stdin even when they didn’t need any input. This caused problems in scripted workflows — piping output into Copilot CLI while calling one of these subcommands would hang. They now return immediately without touching stdin.
Vertical scrollbar and other UX
A vertical scrollbar with mouse drag support has been added to the main conversation view. The kill command safety filter was corrected to allow commands containing shell redirection (like kill -0 <PID> 2>/dev/null), which it had been incorrectly blocking. Reasoning tokens now appear as a parenthetical in token usage summaries. Startup now prunes old process log files from ~/.copilot/logs/ to prevent the directory from growing indefinitely.
Version 1.0.53 (May 24)
1.0.53 is a small follow-up. Multiline prompts now display fully without content clipping or selection offset issues — if you pasted a long prompt, parts of it were being cut off in the display. The /skills picker now correctly honors --config-dir when saving. Bash shell sessions no longer hang when PS0 or PROMPT_COMMAND variables are set.
Sources: Copilot CLI releases