On October 23, 2026, GitHub announced in its official changelog that the new GitHub app in Teams brings notifications and Copilot together. Teams no longer have to switch between two apps: after repository activity arrives in a channel, group chat or private chat, mentioning GitHub in the conversation lets Copilot investigate the issue, fix the code and prepare a pull request, which people still review and test before merging.
Three steps from notification to pull request
First comes the notification: a bug report or update appears in a Teams channel, group chat or private chat, so the team sees the context in the same conversation without jumping back to the repository. Next comes the work: after GitHub is mentioned, Copilot investigates the issue, makes the fix and opens a pull request, drawing on channel and thread history to understand what the discussion is actually about. Finally, people close the loop: the team reviews the pull request, runs tests and merges only when it looks right. Copilot does the coding work; the decision stays with people.
Two kinds of users, two different jobs before November 16
If you use the legacy GitHub app, it will be labelled “GitHub (deprecated)” and retired on November 16, so remove it from your conversations and install the new GitHub app before then. If you use the GitHub Notifications app, update it to the latest version: it will simply be renamed GitHub and gain Copilot capabilities, while existing notification features keep working. The worldwide rollout began in mid-October and should finish by mid-November, so it is normal for some teammates to see the new app before others, with no need to reinstall repeatedly.
What this change really saves
What disappears is not the coding itself but the context switching: notifications used to live in one app and Copilot in another, with the issue, the discussion and the fix scattered across them. Now the notification, the discussion and the fix request sit in one conversation, and Copilot can read back through the thread history, cutting out a lot of re-pasting links and background. That is not the same as handing releases to the model: Copilot features require an eligible Copilot licence, some capabilities are still rolling out gradually, and human review and testing before merging cannot be skipped. The best early candidates are everyday issues with a clear error and a contained change; changes to core architecture or sensitive permissions should still go through the team's usual review process.
