GitHub highlighted desktop computer use in its October 28 Copilot app announcement. The public preview supports local macOS and Windows workflows. A detail in its current operating guide deserves attention: removing an application from Always allowed apps deletes its saved approval for future sessions, but does not revoke access already granted in a running session.
GitHub Docs: desktop-app approvals and running sessions
Distinguish the three decisions
GitHub documents Allow for the current computer-use session and Always allow for future sessions. A saved Always allow approval applies to both the Copilot app and Copilot CLI on the same computer. The guide separately says to click Stop or press Esc to stop the current operation, and to end the session to revoke that session’s application access.
These controls answer different questions: may this operation continue, may this session retain access, and may a later session reuse a saved approval? Changing one entry should not be treated as evidence that all three questions have been resolved.
Use the announcement’s date accurately
The October 28 announcement places computer use alongside the app’s broader Projects workflow and says organizations can disable computer use through managed settings. This is current release context, not its first-ever availability: GitHub had already announced the computer-use public preview on October 1. Preview behavior remains subject to change.
GitHub’s October 28 Copilot app announcement
GitHub’s earlier October 1 computer-use preview announcement
A fictional training exercise
Imagine a team training on a disposable desktop notes application containing invented meeting notes. A participant previously selected Always allow. The training task is now over, and the participant wants to remove ongoing access and avoid automatic approval in a later trial. This scenario is illustrative; no Copilot session was executed for this article.
Write down the desired final state before touching the controls: no operation continuing, the training session ended, and no retained Always allow entry for that application. This is a proposed checklist for the exercise, not a claim that the product displays those three conditions together.
If an operation is still active, use the documented Stop or Esc control. End the training session. Then review the saved application entry in Settings > Computer Use > Always allowed apps and remove it if future reuse is unwanted. Do not substitute deleting that entry for ending a running session.
In a later disposable trial, review any new approval request against the application and action you actually intend. Other permission settings and organization controls can affect whether a request appears. The absence or presence of one prompt is not enough to reconstruct every setting on the computer.
Record what you observed
Keep a short training record: application name, session being ended, whether an operation was active, which saved entry was removed, and the outcome seen in the next trial. Describe observations narrowly. For example, “the saved entry was absent afterward” is more precise than “all access everywhere was revoked.”
Because GitHub documents approval sharing between the app and CLI on the same computer, include both surfaces in your review when your team uses both. Do not extend that statement to every device, account or integration; those are separate configurations to inspect.
If a control is missing or behaves differently from the guide, record the app version, operating system and visible state, then check the current documentation or your administrator’s configuration. Do not invent an explanation from the symptom alone.
Treat stopping and undoing separately
Finishing the access review does not establish that an earlier edit was reversed. In the fictional notes exercise, inspect the training document if you need to know what changed. Record the retained result separately from the approval settings. That keeps the completed work and the permission decision understandable to the next reviewer.
Check the approval boundary
