GitHub gives enterprises until 22 October to choose how new Copilot features arrive

Victoria Shinder25 September 2026, 07:332 min read

GitHub has added a global default policy for generally available Copilot features to enterprise and organisation settings. It can be configured now, under "Default policy for new features" on the Copilot subpage of the AI Controls page, and for the next 28 days it changes nothing for users. The setting reaches beyond the Features and clients page: it also governs the Copilot Code Review policy on the Agents page and the MCP servers in Copilot policy.

Three values are on offer. Enabled makes current and future eligible features available to users by default. Disabled keeps current eligible features unavailable and requires administrator approval for future ones. Let organizations decide pushes the choice down to organisation administrators.

From 22 October the policy takes effect, and the rule is narrow: only features left Unconfigured follow the global default. A feature an administrator has explicitly enabled or disabled keeps that decision. Preview features remain opt-in, and an opt-in that later becomes generally available keeps the existing choice.

What it means

The default itself is less interesting than what it reveals about pace. An enterprise that has been approving Copilot capabilities one at a time has been doing so because each one changes what leaves the building — which repositories a model reads, which agents may act, which MCP servers a client may reach. A standing answer for "everything that ships from now on" is a different kind of decision, and it is being asked once, for an unbounded future list.

The 28 days are the useful part, and the specific thing to do inside them is an inventory rather than a debate. Which eligible features are currently Unconfigured, because those are the only ones the new setting moves. Everything explicitly decided stays put, which means an organisation that has been diligent has less exposure here than one that left the defaults alone — the usual asymmetry, but with a date attached this time.