Microsoft retires the legacy GitHub app in Teams on 16 November

Microsoft retires the legacy GitHub app in Teams on 16 November

23 October 2026: Microsoft will retire the legacy GitHub app for Microsoft Teams on 16 November, after first renaming it "GitHub (deprecated)". Teams that still take repository updates through it need to move to the new GitHub app, which is the former GitHub Notifications app with GitHub Copilot added, and which only works fully once Microsoft 365 and GitHub administrators switch several things on.

Not yet independently verified. The 16 November retirement of the legacy app rests on one Microsoft blog post dated 23 October 2026, which does not say what happens to channels still subscribed through it. GitHub's own pages do not repeat the date. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Microsoft announced the change in a short post on the Microsoft Teams Blog on 23 October 2026. "The legacy GitHub app will be renamed 'GitHub (deprecated)' and retired on November 16," it says, and it tells customers who already have GitHub Notifications installed to update that app to the latest version.

Update, 10 November 2026: The Microsoft Teams Blog post is dated 23 October 2026 and was updated on 26 October. It says the legacy GitHub app will be renamed "GitHub (deprecated)" and retired on 16 November, and it points readers to teams.github.com. It does not say what happens to channels still subscribed through the legacy app.

Two apps become one

Until now Teams carried two GitHub integrations: the original GitHub app and a separate GitHub Notifications app. The new app keeps the notifications app's identity and its name changes to simply GitHub. It still posts repository updates into a channel, a group chat or a private chat, which is the part most engineering teams use day to day.

What is new is that a notification can become a task. Microsoft describes a reply to an issue notification that mentions @GitHub with the work wanted; GitHub Copilot then reads the linked issue or pull request and the conversation in the thread, and can reproduce a bug, run tests, implement a fix and prepare a pull request for review. The team reviews and merges as it would any other change.

GitHub's page for the app adds a shared session: everyone in the same chat or channel thread contributes to one Copilot session rather than separate ones, and a canvas beside the conversation shows the plan, the file changes and the pull request.

Approvals the new app needs

The swap is not only a reinstall. GitHub's own frequently asked questions list what each side has to approve:

• Microsoft 365 administrators: allow the GitHub app in Teams app policies, and turn on resource-specific consent (RSC) so users can let the app read conversation context.
• GitHub enterprise administrators: enable the Copilot cloud agent and cloud sandboxes for every organisation that will use it, and assign GitHub Copilot licences to the users concerned.

Without those, a team can still receive notifications, but the @GitHub requests that hand work to Copilot will not run.

What the thread gives away

Mentioning @GitHub hands the whole thread to Copilot as context, and GitHub says it can use that context to create issues and pull requests. That matters in busy channels where customer names, incident details or credentials are sometimes pasted. GitHub points to its general privacy statement for how the data is handled. Participants can follow a session, add context and steer the plan, but repository permissions and existing approval rules still decide who may authorise and merge changes.

For an admin with the legacy app in use, the work before 16 November is to find the channels it serves, install or update the GitHub app there, and decide whether to grant RSC and Copilot access or keep the app to notifications only. Our team communication software category lists 13 products and our AI coding assistant software category lists six.

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Sources

• Microsoft Teams Blog: Turn GitHub notifications into code with GitHub Copilot in Microsoft Teams, 23 October 2026
• GitHub: GitHub Copilot for Microsoft Teams (read 2026-10-24), 24 October 2026
• Microsoft Teams Blog: Turn GitHub notifications into code with GitHub Copilot in Microsoft Teams (updated 26 October), 23 October 2026