What causes "Copilot sign-in was cancelled." in zed-industries/zed?

Restart sign-in and approve the GitHub Copilot OAuth app when prompted

Copilot sign-in was cancelled.

Error message

Copilot sign-in was cancelled.

What it means

GitHub's device-flow token endpoint returned error='access_denied', which Zed translates to 'Copilot sign-in was cancelled.' This means the authorization request was actively denied rather than expired - most commonly the user clicked 'Cancel' on GitHub's consent screen, or an org's OAuth policy blocked the app.

Source

Thrown at crates/copilot_chat/src/copilot_oauth.rs:133

            .body(AsyncBody::from(body.clone()))?;

        let mut response = client.send(request).await?;
        let mut response_body = Vec::new();
        response.body_mut().read_to_end(&mut response_body).await?;

        let parsed: AccessTokenResponse = serde_json::from_slice(&response_body)
            .context("Failed to parse GitHub access-token response")?;

        if let Some(token) = parsed.access_token {
            return Ok(token);
        }

        match parsed.error.as_deref() {
            Some("authorization_pending") => continue,
            // GitHub asks us to back off; increase the interval and keep polling.
            Some("slow_down") => interval += 5,
            Some("expired_token") => bail!("The Copilot sign-in code expired. Please try again."),
            Some("access_denied") => bail!("Copilot sign-in was cancelled."),
            Some(other) => bail!("Copilot sign-in failed: {other}"),
            None => bail!("Copilot sign-in failed: unexpected response from GitHub"),
        }
    }
}

fn form_encode(fields: &[(&str, &str)]) -> String {
    fields
        .iter()
        .map(|(key, value)| format!("{}={}", url_encode(key), url_encode(value)))
        .collect::<Vec<_>>()
        .join("&")
}

fn url_encode(value: &str) -> String {
    let mut encoded = String::with_capacity(value.len());
    for byte in value.bytes() {
        match byte {

View on GitHub (pinned to f4178619ac)

Solutions

Restart sign-in and approve the GitHub Copilot OAuth app when prompted
If on an org account: ask an org owner to approve/allow the Copilot OAuth application
Check github.com/settings/applications for a previously denied state

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

match poll_for_token(/* .. */).await {
    Ok(token) => Ok(token),
    Err(err) if err.to_string().contains("cancelled") => {
        // user-denied: return a non-error UI state prompting retry, not a crash
        Ok(None)
    }
    Err(err) => Err(err),
}

Prevention

Treat access_denied as a user choice: show a friendly retry prompt, never a generic failure
If org OAuth policies block the app, surface that hint when the denial repeats

When it happens

Trigger: Polling receives access_denied after the user rejects the Copilot OAuth app authorization on github.com, cancels the consent prompt, or the GitHub organization restricts third-party OAuth apps so consent auto-denies.

Common situations: Users clicking through GitHub consent screens too quickly; org-managed accounts with OAuth app allow-lists; re-trying sign-in after previously denying and expecting it to succeed without re-consent.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of zed-industries/zed@f4178619ac (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f57a6b95c764b9cb. Report an issue: GitHub.