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VS Code is where many cross-platform and web developers already work, but getting package identity, MSIX packaging, and Windows SDK tooling often meant reaching for Visual Studio or command-line tools. The WinApp VS Code extension brings the full power of the Windows App Development...

In February, we announced how GitHub Copilot can now use C++ symbol context and CMake build configuration awareness to deliver smarter suggestions in Visual Studio Code. Today, we're excited to share new ways to further enhance your C++ development experience with Copilot and get the most...

Hello Java customers! We are happy to announce the latest April 2026 patch & security update release for the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK. Check our release notes page for details on fixes and enhancements or download and install the binaries today. The source code of our builds...

Build intelligent AI agents in .NET with the Microsoft Agent Framework. Learn how to create agents with tools, multi-turn conversations, memory, and graph-based workflows that bring together the building blocks from Parts 1 and 2.

Run SQL MCP Server on Azure App Service without containers. This walkthrough uses Data API builder to configure authentication, expose MCP, REST, and GraphQL endpoints, and deploy as code.

"Is ContosoParts.msix installed?" is a common - but misleading - question The term install is not a formal concept in MSIX. This may seem paradoxical for a deployment technology, but it makes perfect sense once you understand MSIX deployment’s core architecture. Deployment...

You don't. All files are binary at the file system level.

Removing The Monkey Work of Migration; in this post we show how Git-Ape analyses an AWS deployment repo and generates an Azure-native replacement, with design critique built in. This post walks through a real migration workflow: start with an AWS deployment repo and end with an...

Reviewed by Sumit Sarabhai Fetching a million rows from SQL Server into a Polars DataFrame used to mean a million Python objects, a million GC allocations, and then throwing it all away to build a DataFrame. Not anymore. mssql-python now supports fetching SQL Server data...

Python developers can now build Teams-native apps and agents using the same SDK surface that powers modern Teams experiences across our TypeScript and .NET stacks 

As part of moving to general availability (GA) for Entra Agent ID, agent identity objects will only accept dynamic membership groups and unified (Microsoft 365) groups as group-type sponsors.

We've shipped the new Run dialog - and we want to say thanks. As the team behind Windows Terminal and PowerToys, we're excited to bring this to Windows 11, and your feedback helped shape it! Run has been rebuilt from the ground up: Modern design: A refreshed look that matches Fluent...

Build AI Agents and RAG Applications with the New LangChain + LangGraph Connector for Azure Cosmos DB Building AI agents and RAG applications today means stitching together half a dozen services, a vector database, a chat history store, a checkpointer for agent state, a semantic cache, a...

Recovering from death of the owner.

  Hey WinUI developers! If you’re new around here, WinUI Gallery is the go-to app for exploring WinUI 3 controls, samples, design guidance, and handy tools — all in one place. Today, we’re excited to announce WinUI 3 Gallery 2.9, our first release built on Windows App...

The Azure Developer CLI (azd) shipped five releases in April 2026. The biggest theme this month is multi-language hook support: write azd hooks in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or .NET alongside the existing Bash and PowerShell options. Here's what's in versions 1.23.14, 1.23.15,...

Dataverse gives developers a powerful platform for building enterprise applications — but getting from zero to a connected, working environment has always involved multiple tools, authentication flows, and configuration steps. The Dataverse plugin was built to accelerate that journey by...

TypeScript 7 Beta Now Enabled by Default in Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 In Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 we have updated the built-in TypeScript SDK to TypeScript 7 Beta (native preview). The TypeScript SDK provides the compiler and language service used for TypeScript and...

Learn how we built ConferencePulse, an AI-powered conference assistant, using .NET's composable AI stack including Microsoft.Extensions.AI, DataIngestion, VectorData, Model Context Protocol, and Microsoft Agent Framework.

We previously introduced Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) on select Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs, to make games look sharper and play smoother. Today, we're excited to give Xbox Insiders the opportunity to help us test and refine this feature on the ROG Xbox Ally X for docked play, where...

Let the exclusive acquisition have a fair chance against shared acquisitions.

A security-first architecture that propagates SharePoint document permissions into downstream AI systems, using Microsoft Entra ID object IDs (GUIDs) for safe, query-time filtering in Azure AI Search, RAG pipelines, and Copilot extensions.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.118 Read the full article

Learn how to use a coding agent to register and agent with Teams.

Introduction Managing access to Azure resources often means dealing with two separate permission models: one for management operations and another for data access. For Azure Cosmos DB customers, this split can increase complexity, slow down onboarding, and create confusion around...

Introduction: Transforming Customer Intelligence in Banking Every day, people interact with their bank across mobile apps, branches, call centers, ATMs, chatbots, and partner ecosystems. Each touchpoint holds a piece of the customer story but rarely the whole picture. For many...

This post announces the General Availability of Microsoft Desired State Configuration (DSC) v3.2.0, with new Windows resources, Bicep gRPC integration, WhatIf support, expression language improvements, and adapter enhancements.

Learn how to govern MCP tool calls in .NET with the Agent Governance Toolkit—policy-based access control, security scanning, and response sanitization to reduce risk in AI agent systems.

VSTest is removing its Newtonsoft.Json dependency in .NET 11 and Visual Studio 18.8. Here's who is affected and how to fix it.

We’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Single Sign-On (SSO) from Native Apps to Embedded Web Views for Microsoft Entra External ID (EEID) Native Authentication. This release marks a major milestone in delivering end-to-end seamless authentication experiences for...

Starting in Visual Studio 18.5, you can create and build Visual Studio extensions (VSIX) using an officially supported SDK-style project. This brings VSIX projects into the modern build and deployment pipeline, improving incremental build performance and making the build → deploy →...

Please, not everybody, everything all at once.

Introduction When I started writing software professionally in 2015, the tech landscape looked completely different. Tools and frameworks kept evolving since then, but the process of building software barely moved for a decade. That changed in the last couple of months. Here's what has...

As organizations move from single-agent prototypes to multi-agent production systems, the ability for agents to communicate reliably across platforms and organizational boundaries becomes essential. With the release of A2A Protocol v1.0 and updated support in the Microsoft Agent...

GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio is becoming more agentic with every release. This update brings cloud agent integration front and center, letting you start remote coding sessions without leaving the IDE.

Azure Functions lets you settle each Service Bus message on its own within a batch. Complete, abandon, dead-letter, or defer messages one by one to avoid duplicate processing and handle errors with precision.

SPFx is powering the future of Microsoft 365 with AI driven portals and deep integrations across SharePoint and Microsoft 365. The April 2026 update shares new features and the roadmap for the next evolution built for the AI era. This is a transparent community driven journey that we shape together.

SkiaSharp 4.0 Preview 1 is here. Learn all about the new features and how Uno Platform has stepped up as a co-maintainer.

Adding caching to your application architecture can significantly improve key performance metrics, cut latency, and reduce load across downstream systems. In this walkthrough, we highlight the latest caching best practices and incorporate these design patterns into a reusable .NET application that you can reference when adding new capabilities to your application stack.

Learn how to implement API versioning in your .NET 10 applications using OpenAPI for better API management and documentation.

A pot of tokens.

Today is the day. Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2026, in partnership with AMD, is a free virtual developer event focused on building modern, scalable applications with Azure Cosmos DB. The agenda features Microsoft engineers, product team leaders, and members of the global developer community...

We're back with a fresh PowerToys release! This month introduces Power Display for controlling your monitors from the system tray, Grab And Move for quickly moving and resizing windows, and a wave of improvements to Command Palette and the Dock, along with updates across the utility...

The April 2026 release update includes the Python Environments extension... Keep on reading to learn more!

Azure Data Studio (ADS) retired on February 6, 2025, and support ended on February 28, 2026. The recommended path forward is Visual Studio Code with the MSSQL extension. If you used ADS daily, this guide gets you productive quickly in VS Code. The focus is on importing your existing...

Overview Today, we are pleased to announce that Shader Model 6.10 and other features have been officially released with Agility SDK 1.720-preview and complementary DXC 1.10.2605.2. AgilitySDK 1.720-preview exposes the following features. There's more detail further below, including...

Welcome to the D3D12 LinAlg Matrix Preview release! Today, we are excited to announce the preview release for the D3D12 Linear Algebra APIs! This feature set unlocks comprehensive hardware acceleration for Matrix-oriented operations across various use cases. Previously, we announced...

It's bad news no matter how you slice it, but Itanium makes it even worse.

Azure MCP Server is now available as an MCP Bundle (.mcpb), enabling one-click installation into Claude Desktop and other MCP-compatible clients.

When people talk about building AI agents, they usually focus on models, tools, and prompts. In practice, one of the most important architectural decisions is much simpler: where does the conversation history live? Imagine a user asks your agent a complex question, clicks “try...

But maybe it's not worth it.

On March 31, 2026, malicious versions of the widely used JavaScript HTTP client library Axios were briefly published to the npm registry as part of a supply chain attack. The affected versions — 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 — included a hidden malicious dependency that executed during...

Ubuntu 26.04 (Resolute Raccoon) ships today with .NET 10. Here's how to install .NET 10 from the archive, use the new -resolute container tags, build Native AOT apps, and install .NET 8 and 9 from the dotnet-backports PPA.

Want to build AI agents with JavaScript that go beyond basic chat completions? Agents that reason, call tools, and pull from knowledge bases on their own? We put together a free, open source course to help you get there. LangChain.js for Beginners is 8 chapters and 70+ runnable...

We’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Single Sign-On (SSO) from Native Apps to Embedded Web Views for Microsoft Entra External ID (EEID) Native Authentication. This release marks a major milestone in delivering end-to-end seamless authentication experiences for...

Modern AI agents often aren't bottlenecked by model quality, they are bottlenecked by orchestration overhead. When an agent chains together many small tool calls, each step typically requires a new model turn, driving up latency and token usage. With CodeAct support in Agent...

Inadvertently destroying a staircase while standing on it.

Key insights from the EDA and Ground Truth journey for solving well identity resolution in the Energy industry—challenges that extend to any entity matching problem across distributed systems.

The 2026 ISO C++ developer survey is now open: 2026 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite" : Standard C++ It takes about 10 minutes and directly informs the standardization committee and tooling vendors so the C++ ecosystem can continue evolving the right way. Please share your feedback...

We recently brought C++ code understanding tools to GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio and VS Code. These tools provide precise, semantic understanding of your C++ code to GitHub Copilot using the same IntelliSense engine that powers code navigation in the IDE. Until now, these capabilities...

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.117 Read the full article

Hooks are one of the most popular features in azd, and now you can write them in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or .NET, not just Bash and PowerShell. What's new? The Azure Developer CLI (azd) hook system now supports four more languages beyond Bash and PowerShell. You can write hook...

Today we released PIX version 2604.27004-preview, which can be downloaded here. This release has initial support for the new D3D12 features, notably Batched Asynchronous Command List APIs, that was released in a preview DirectX Agility SDK today. Please visit this blog post for more...

AI apps and agentic workloads expose inefficiencies in your data layer faster than any previous generation of apps. You’re storing embeddings, serving low-latency retrieval, handling bursty traffic from chat and orchestration, and often operating across regions. Done right, Azure Cosmos...

Available in Public Preview Today   Toolbox is a new way to curate, configure, and reuse tools across all of your AI agents without rewiring them every time from Foundry.  Today, teams build agents across different frameworks and runtimes. Each agent often wires tools directly,...

When we launched Microsoft Agent Framework last October, we made a promise: building production-grade AI agents should feel as natural and structured as building any other software. Today, we’re delivering on that promise — with the v1.0 release of Microsoft Agent Framework and the...

Agents are already transforming how developers solve problems. Whether it's a coding agent that refactors your repo overnight, a research agent that synthesizes hundreds of documents into a brief, or an ops agent that monitors and remediates infrastructure — the pattern is clear....

With just a single improvement in the REST API of Azure DevOps, we achieved a massive reduction in CPU usage and execution time when managing Git policies: 2x less CPU and 10-15x faster execution! This change is already available to all users of Azure DevOps, and it's time to share a bit...

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quickly becoming a common way for AI agents to discover and use tools. It provides a consistent interface to databases, APIs, file systems, and third-party services, which makes it easier to plug capabilities into agent workflows. However, MCP...

Windows App Development CLI v0.3 is here! This release brings some of our best features yet including a full run-and-debug experience outside Visual Studio and built-in UI Automation from the command line. With v0.3, we've unlocked a whole class of agentic and automation scenarios....

So-called "fractal page mapping".

We're excited to announce the public preview of the highly anticipated Actual Result (AR) feature for manual testing in Azure Test Plans! This feature has been one of the top requests of the community, and we're thrilled to make it available for you. Why use the Actual Result...

~1,900 lines of Python. Zero dependencies. Saves you an hour a day. GitHub → · pip install auto-memory Now give Copilot CLI enhanced context recall. Point it at deploy/install.md and let it cook. 🍳 Are you tired of using the slash /compact command every 10 min? The...

Azure SDK releases every month. In this post, you'll find this month's highlights and release notes.

This post is the first in a 3-part series: Foundations (this post) Start shipping (context engineering, MCP servers, orchestration) App modernization (Java, .NET, PHP, microservices) Bookmark this post for quick reference as you start exploring Agentic DevOps. It will be...

The Agent-Ready Database: Security, Backup, and MCP Part 4 of 4 – The Multi-Model Database Series This is the final post in a four-part series on multi-model databases in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL - exploring how the optimizer, storage engine, and security layer treat each data...

We are releasing .NET 10.0.7 as an out-of-band security update to address CVE-2026-40372.

Today we are absolutely thrilled to announce the release of TypeScript 7.0 Beta! If you haven't been following TypeScript 7.0's development, this release is significant in that it is built on a completely new foundation. Over the past year, we have been porting the existing TypeScript...

Protecting sensitive data is a foundational requirement for modern applications. As organizations scale their use of Azure Cosmos DB across teams, environments, and workloads, controlling who can see sensitive information becomes increasingly important. Today, we are excited to...

Aspire 13.2 keeps the JavaScript story moving with Bun for Vite, more predictable containers, and small but meaningful fixes across debugging and builds.

Somehow xor became the most popular version.

This update brings a set of improvements and changes across both local and remote Azure DevOps MCP Servers. Here’s a summary of what’s changed. Query work items with WIQL We’ve introduced a new wit_query_by_wiql tool that enables users to construct and run work item WIQL queries....

The Azure Developer CLI (azd) now integrates with GitHub Copilot for AI-assisted project scaffolding and intelligent deployment error troubleshooting, helping you resolve common Azure errors like MissingSubscriptionRegistration, SkuNotAvailable, and StorageAccountAlreadyTaken without leaving the terminal.

The C# Dev Kit team replaced C++ Node.js addons with C# and Native AOT, removing a dependency on Python. This post walks through building a Node.js native addon entirely in C# using N-API, LibraryImport, and UnmanagedCallersOnly.

You still have to use aligned accesses, even though the pixels might not be aligned.

How to build an observable MCP Server with discoverable tools and agents.

Preallocating memory to avoid quadratic behavior.

Legacy codebases frequently contain hardcoded logic and complex build scripts that depend on specific filesystem structures, making them notoriously difficult to modernize in isolated environments. Docker Sandbox addresses this challenge through a bidirectional workspace sync that...

April 2026 brings three major Reinforcement Fine-Tuning updates: Global Training for o4-mini with lower per-token rates across 12+ regions, new GPT-4.1 model graders for richer reward signals, and a comprehensive RFT best practices guide to help you ship specialized models faster.

Aspire 13.2 brings detached mode to the CLI. Run your AppHost in the background, free your terminal, and let coding agents start, inspect, and manage your app without blocking.

In March 2026, developers came together at VS Live! Las Vegas for a full week of technical learning, hands-on exploration, and a lot of great conversations about where software development is headed next. From AI-assisted development to modern .NET, cloud-native apps, and developer...

Trespassing on system messages.

Learn what's new in Visual Studio Code 1.116 Read the full article

Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required Azure MCP tools are now built into Visual Studio 2022 as part of the Azure development workload — no separate extension to find, install, or update. You can enable over 230 tools across 45 Azure services...

.NET MAUI 11 adds pin clustering to the Map control, automatically grouping nearby pins into cluster markers. Learn how to enable clustering, create separate clustering groups, and handle cluster taps on Android and iOS.

We’ve all been there: a bug report lands in your inbox with a title like "App crashes sometimes" and zero reproduction steps. Your morning, which was supposed to be spent building new features, is now a forensic investigation. You’re setting scattershot breakpoints, staring at...

We're shipping two major capabilities that change how security teams enable and act on application security in Azure DevOps: CodeQL default setup makes it possible to enable code scanning across your organization without configuring a single pipeline, and a new combined alerts experience...

Maybe it didn't really exit.

AI agents are quickly moving from experiments to production‑critical components of modern applications. But while many teams know how to build agents, far fewer are confident they’re hosting them on the right foundation. Most organizations start by deploying agents the same way...

Practices, Principles, and Strategic Direction Software delivery has entered a new phase. AI agents are no longer confined to autocomplete suggestions in the editor. They are opening pull requests, generating code across multiple files, proposing infrastructure changes, responding to...

A recap of the latest servicing updates for .NET and .NET Framework for April 2026.

Find out about the new features in .NET 11 Preview 3 across the .NET runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI, C#, Entity Framework Core, container images, and more!

Update the Azure Developer CLI with a single command on any platform and switch release channels.

We are releasing patches for our self‑hosted product, Azure DevOps Server. We strongly recommend that all customers remain on the latest, most secure version to ensure optimal protection and reliability. The latest release of Azure DevOps Server is available from the download...

PostgreSQL is a powerful and hugely popular database engine, and it really comes alive across Microsoft developer platforms. You can build with PostgreSQL across Azure offerings, develop productively in Visual Studio Code with strong extensions and tooling, and connect your data to...

Aspire 13.2 brings MongoDB Entity Framework Core and Azure Data Lake Storage integrations, plus quality-of-life improvements to existing database clients.

Try out the final preview of MSVC Build Tools v14.51

Not a direct line to Bill Gates's office.