Codeium Completions Not Showing After VS Code Update: Fix It

May 9, 2026 · Editorial Team · 5 min read · codeium troubleshooting error-fix

VS Code updated overnight, you open it in the morning, and Codeium just isn't suggesting anything. The extension is still installed, the status bar shows the Codeium icon, you're authenticated, and yet typing produces no ghost text at all. This is one of those problems that always seems to happen when you're trying to get something done quickly, and because it appeared after a VS Code update you're not sure if it's a VS Code problem, a Codeium problem, or a compatibility problem between them. The answer is usually all three in some combination.

What this error actually means

Codeium's VS Code extension depends on the InlineCompletionProvider API, which VS Code exposes to extensions that provide ghost-text completions. When VS Code updates, it sometimes changes the behavior of this API or introduces bugs in how it dispatches completion requests. If the Codeium extension was built against an older API version, the extension loads successfully but the completion provider either doesn't register correctly or receives requests it can't parse.

Codeium also runs a local language server process (the codeium-language-server binary) that handles the actual completion requests. VS Code update frequently involve changes to how extension processes are sandboxed or how they communicate with the extension host, and these changes can break the IPC channel between VS Code's extension host and the Codeium language server.

Quick fix (when you need it working in 60 seconds)

Open the command palette and run Codeium: Sign Out, then Codeium: Sign In. Token state sometimes gets corrupted across VS Code restarts.
Run Developer: Restart Extension Host from the command palette. This reinitializes all extension processes without a full VS Code restart.
If that doesn't work, fully quit VS Code and relaunch it.
Check View > Output > Codeium Language Server for any errors. A crash or connection refused error here tells you the language server itself is the problem.
Open a new file, type def hello, and wait 3 seconds. If completions appear there but not in your regular files, the issue is language-specific settings.

Why this happens

The most common cause after a VS Code update is a version pin mismatch. VS Code's extension marketplace sometimes delays Codeium extension updates by 12-24 hours after a new VS Code version ships. In that window, you can end up running VS Code 1.96.2 with a Codeium extension that was built and tested against 1.95. The inline completion API has changed enough between minor VS Code versions in 2025-2026 that this gap reliably breaks ghost-text rendering.

The Codeium language server binary is another common failure point. The extension ships a platform-specific binary that it launches as a subprocess. If VS Code updates its process sandboxing rules (which it does occasionally for security), the previously allowed binary might now be blocked from executing. On macOS this shows up as a Gatekeeper warning that VS Code swallows silently. On Linux, AppArmor profile changes can block the subprocess.

Extension conflicts are a less obvious cause. VS Code's Inline Suggestions feature can only have one active provider shown at a time, but multiple extensions can register as providers. After a VS Code update, the priority ordering can change, so a different extension (like GitHub Copilot or Tabnine if you have both installed) might win the queue and suppress Codeium's suggestions. You'd still see the Codeium status as active because it's registered, but its suggestions are being pre-empted.

Auto-suggestion settings can also get reset by VS Code updates. VS Code has its own editor.inlineSuggest.enabled setting that Codeium relies on. If a VS Code update resets this to false, Codeium's completions are disabled at the VS Code layer before they even reach Codeium.

Permanent fix

Make sure editor.inlineSuggest.enabled is true in your VS Code settings:

"editor.inlineSuggest.enabled": true,
"editor.suggest.preview": true

Check that Codeium is updated to the latest version. VS Code should update it automatically, but sometimes it doesn't:
- Open Extensions panel (Cmd+Shift+X)
- Find Codeium
- If "Update" button is visible, click it
- Reload VS Code after updating
Kill any orphaned Codeium language server processes:
```
# macOS/Linux
pkill -f codeium-language-server
```
Then restart VS Code.

On macOS, clear the quarantine flag from the language server binary:

find ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/globalStorage/codeium.codeium/ -name "language_server_*" -exec xattr -d com.apple.quarantine {} \;

Clear Codeium's extension storage and force a fresh download of the language server:

# macOS
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/globalStorage/codeium.codeium/
# Linux
rm -rf ~/.config/Code/User/globalStorage/codeium.codeium/
# Windows
rmdir /s /q "%APPDATA%\Code\User\globalStorage\codeium.codeium"

Restart VS Code. Codeium will re-download the language server binary on first launch.

Disable other completion extensions temporarily to test for conflicts:
- Disable GitHub Copilot, Tabnine, IntelliCode, or any other autocomplete extension
- See if Codeium completions appear
- If they do, re-enable one by one to find the conflict

In the VS Code settings, set Codeium as the explicit completion provider priority:

"editor.inlineSuggest.suppressSuggestions": false,
"codeium.enableConfig": {
  "*": true
}

Check the actual language server binary exists and is executable:

ls -la ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/globalStorage/codeium.codeium/
# Should see language_server_* binary files
chmod +x ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/globalStorage/codeium.codeium/language_server_*

Prevention

Don't auto-update VS Code without checking the Codeium changelog first. The Codeium team maintains a compatibility matrix at codeium.com/changelog and usually ships a compatible extension update within 24 hours of a VS Code release. If you wait a day before updating VS Code, you usually avoid the broken window entirely.

Keep VS Code's auto-update set to "minor" rather than "patch" if you depend heavily on Codeium for your workflow. Patch updates are usually safe but some minor versions have introduced inline completion API changes.

Add the Codeium log output to your regular debugging toolkit. You don't need to check it every day, but having View > Output > Codeium Language Server open when you first launch after an update tells you instantly if the server started correctly.

For teams, consider locking VS Code to a specific version in your dev container or .vscode/extensions.json configuration. This prevents the update-mismatch problem entirely across the whole team.

When the fix doesn't work

If you've cleared the extension storage, re-authenticated, and completions still don't appear, check whether Codeium is receiving your keystrokes at all. Codeium has a diagnostic command: open the command palette and run Codeium: Open Diagnostic Panel. This shows whether the language server is running, whether it's receiving requests, and whether it's returning completions. If it shows completions being returned but nothing showing in the editor, the issue is in VS Code's rendering layer and is likely a VS Code bug. Report it at github.com/microsoft/vscode.

If the diagnostic panel shows no completions being returned, file a bug at codeium.com/help with your VS Code version, Codeium version, and the language server log output. Codeium's support team is responsive to post-update breakage reports.