[FEATURE] Syntax highlighting in VS Code extension chat panel (re-opening closed requests)
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Workaround ✓ Mentioned in thread ↓
Activity 15 comments · opened Jun 3, 2026
Summary
The Claude Code VS Code extension renders fenced code blocks in the chat panel as plain monochrome text. No syntax highlighting is applied regardless of the language tag (typescript, python, diff, etc.) or the user's active VS Code theme.
Context
This has been reported before but both issues were closed by the stale bot without a maintainer decision:
- #54295 — Add syntax highlighting to fenced code blocks in the VS Code extension chat panel
- #21667 — Code blocks in Claude Code's chat interface only show a dark background without full syntax highlighting
Since code suggestions are the primary output of Claude Code, reading monochrome code is noticeably slower. Users already have grammars, language servers, and themes configured — the chat panel is the only place that ignores them.
Proposed implementation
VS Code exposes APIs for exactly this:
- TextMate grammar tokenization via
vscode.languages— renders with the active theme, no extra dependency - Shiki (same lib VS Code's markdown preview uses) — lightweight fallback
Expected behavior
Code blocks are tokenized by their language tag and styled with the active VS Code theme, matching the editor appearance.
15 Comments
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
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It's pointless to refer to issues that were closed without good reason.
I would really like this feature as well, similar to how in the claude code cli it has syntax highlighting.
please consider adding
how does this not have syntax highlighting yet..
Please do it, coders yearns for coloured code snippets!
Well, this is disgusting. So much time has passed, but the developers absolutely don't care about this problem, which their competitor solved long ago. Maybe it's time to cancel the subscription.
still relevant in the current version (2.1.220)
Please fix this. It's infuriating that copilot chat has this basic feature working and this extension doesn't
Please do this!
+1 Please do this!
has anyone found any another non-official workaround?
+1 please do this. And somehow the chat window is always black on grey, regardless of VS code theme or color settings. It's a miserable looking thing, and harder to read than it needs to be.
I finally made the move to Claude code and was met with this. I don't really know what to say. It really seems like such a basic feature shouldn't have been open for 2 months and counting?
If I use the Claude in the native code Copilot Chat UI then it won't let me take use of the credits in the "Pro" plan, so I have to use the extension if I want Claude integrated in code to access those credits.
But then I lose syntax highlighting... Am I missing anything here or is this actually the case?
If there are any solid workarounds, please let me know.
WHY IS THERE NO RESPONSE from the engineering team?