GitHub Codespaces overview

In this article

This guide introduces GitHub Codespaces and provides details on how it works and how to use it.

What is a codespace?

A codespace is a development environment that's hosted in the cloud. You can customize your project for GitHub Codespaces by committing configuration files to your repository (often known as Configuration-as-Code), which creates a repeatable codespace configuration for all users of your project. For more information, see "Introduction to dev containers."

Each codespace you create is hosted by GitHub in a Docker container, running on a virtual machine. You can choose from a selection of virtual machine types, from 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 32 GB storage, up to 32 cores, 64 GB RAM, and 128 GB storage.

By default, the codespace development environment is created from an Ubuntu Linux image that includes a selection of popular languages and tools, but you can use an image based on a Linux distribution of your choice and configure it for your particular requirements. Regardless of your local operating system, your codespace will run in a Linux environment. Windows and MacOS are not supported operating systems for the remote development container.

You can connect to your codespaces from your browser, from Visual Studio Code, from the JetBrains Gateway application, or by using GitHub CLI. When you connect, you are placed within the Docker container. You have limited access to the outer Linux virtual machine host.

Diagram showing the relationship between a code editor and a codespace running on an Azure virtual machine.

Benefits of GitHub Codespaces

Reasons for choosing to work in a codespace include:

  • Use a preconfigured development environment - You can work in a development environment that has been specifically configured for the repository. It will have all of the tools, languages, and configurations you need to work on that project. Everyone who works on that repository in a codespace will have the same environment. This reduces the likelihood of environment-related problems occurring and being difficult to debug. Each repository can have settings that will give contributors a ready-to-use, fit-for-purpose environment, and the environment on your local machine will be unchanged.
  • Access the resources you need - Your local computer may not have the processing power, or storage space, you need to work on a