Theia IDE 1.68.x Preview Testing

[jfaltermeier]

The new version 1.68.0 of the Theia IDE is available on the preview channel now. Please join the preview testing!

You can download it here:

• Linux
• Mac x86
• Mac ARM
• Windows

Update your existing installation by setting the preference updates.channel to preview.

Please respond here when you can test the preview without finding blockers, by commenting with a ✔️.
If you find any issues, please mention them in this thread and report them as an issue once confirmed by other testers.

Phase	Target	Status
1.68.0 preview available	2026-02-02	✅
1.68.0 community preview window	2026-02-02 → 2026-02-06	⏳, ⛔ blockers found
1.68.200 preview available	2026-02-06	✅
1.68.200 community preview window	2026-02-06 → 2026-02-10	✅
Theia IDE 1.68.x Promoted to Stable	2026-02-11	✅
Docker image Publish	2026-02-11	✅
Snap updated	2026-02-11	✅
Theia IDE 1.68.201 Promoted to Stable	2026-02-16	✅

[CamilleLetavernier]

Saving the conversations in the current workspace gives some surprising results. While I understand the idea of having per-workspace history, I noticed the following problems:

• conversations are still loaded from the global store (e.g. ~/.theia-ide/chat-sessions), and then saved in the current workspace (e.g. ~/Workspaces/theia/.theia-ide/chat-sessions)
  • as a result, if we delete the chat-sessions from the workspace, they appear again next time, because they are still loaded from the global store
• AI tool calls such as "searchInWorkspace" will see these chat-sessions (and are very likely to hit them during search, because AI will likely search for keywords we just suggested in the last message)

I guess we could get around this by using the "global" store, with per-workspace paths (assuming we use workspace settings rather than user settings); but that still involves modifying the current workspace settings for something that is rather user-specific (so it might be tedious to use with git / git reset).

I think this third option should be built-in: per-workspace history, but stored outside of the workspace.

[cdamus]

Perfect, thanks! I'll get right on it.

[cdamus]

@ndoschek PR ready for review: #16933

[cdamus]

Even if I create an empty .theia/chatSessions directory up front, my chat sessions get saved in the .theia-ide/chatSessions directory. I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding the lifecycle of the workspace chat store.

It's not literally .theia/chatSessions/ directory. The root depends on the configuration directory name of the application, so in your case you would have had to pre-provision an empty .theia-ide/chatSessions/ directory and for my fabulous Damus's Music Workbench it would have been .damusmuswb/chatSessions/. 😀

[sdirix]

Personally I would prefer the "store workspace related data outside of the workspace" approach. Previous chat sessions are simply not workspace data, so storing them there is weird overall.

We don't need to implement this in the open PR but in general we should support such a feature. VS Code supports this too. There they store all kinds of data including the layout data. In Theia this is weirdly placed in the local storage of the Browser. Ideally we would support this very generically, so adopters could choose which (file system) location they want to use in their applications.

[cdamus]

Thanks @sdirix I am convinced. I've followed up on the PR with two new commits to implement a general-purpose workspace metadata storage service and to update the chat session persistence to use it. Overall the UX is now much simpler and more stream-lined, especially in the preferences which now are just a single scope selection for global or workspace scope.

[eneufeld]

I agree that this is unexpected especially as it pollutes the git view. let's at least move them to the .prompts folder

[JonasHelming]

The prompts folder is usually not .gitignore

[cdamus]

Theia repository has git-ignored .theia/chatSessions/. I recommend that users add this rule to their global git-ignores if they use Theia IDE in mixed setups. Perhaps that can be suggested somehow to users in the UI; not sure whether we have a mechanism in place for that.

[sgraband]

I haven't observed any blockers on my end ✔️

[ndoschek]

We've decided to prepare a patch release to address the chat sessions issue and to include a previously missed preference update related to the improved workspace trust.

Please follow the endgame checklist here:

• 1.68.1 endgame plan #16938

We expect an updated preview towards the end of the week.

[jfaltermeier]

The new version 1.68.200 of the Theia IDE is available on the preview channel now. Please join the preview testing!

You can download it here:

• Linux
• Mac x86
• Mac ARM
• Windows

Update your existing installation by setting the preference updates.channel to preview.

Please respond here when you can test the preview without finding blockers, by commenting with a ✔️.
If you find any issues, please mention them in this thread and report them as an issue once confirmed by other testers.

[jfaltermeier]

Works for me ✔️

[ndoschek]

Works for me ✔️

[jfaltermeier]

1.68.200 has been promoted to stable

[ndoschek]

Update: We've published a new Theia IDE version 1.68.201 that fixes the macOS terminal issue reported in issue eclipse-theia/theia-ide#664.

1.68.201 has been promoted to stable.