Announcing the Release of the Git Experience in Visual Studio
Pratik Nadagouda
We’re excited to announce that our new Git tooling is now the default source control experience in Visual Studio 2019, beginning with version 16.8. We’ve been working on this experience over the last year, iterating based on your feedback to build out key features, enhance performance, and fine tune quality. Above all, we’ve focused on improving discoverability for your common workflows and simplifying navigation to reduce context-switching. Regardless of whether you are part of a large team or working on a personal project, whether you are an experienced developer or just starting out, we strongly believe the new Git experience in Visual Studio 2019 will have something for you. Here’s seven reasons why we think you should try it out.
Git Productivity in Visual Studio 2019
Redesigned Git repository creation
To get started with Git, Visual Studio lets you add your local code to Git and GitHub with a single click. The Create a Git repository dialog contains the new integrated GitHub sign-in flow, similar to what we offer for Microsoft accounts. Here, you can set the repository to be publicly visible or switch it to private. That makes it securely accessible to only you and any designated collaborators. In addition to GitHub, you can also push your code to an existing remote repository. This can be one you’ve already created on Azure DevOps or any other provider. And finally, you can choose to create a local-only Git repository if you are not ready to push to a remote host.
Create Repository dialog
Accessible top level Git menu
You can now access your favorite Git features using the top level Git menu. It’s at easy reach through the Alt+G keyboard shortcut. This menu also has the Local Repositories submenu. By expanding it, you can easily switch between local Git repositories you have previously opened in Visual Studio.
Git menu with Local Repositories list
View files in Solution Explorer
After you’ve opened or cloned a Git repository, Visual Studio helps you get straight to your code. Solution Explorer loads the root of the repository and scans the directory for any View files. Instead of having to search for your .sln file to open it, Visual Studio detects and loads the solution automatically. If your repository has more than one .sln file, then Solution Explorer shows you the list of available views to choose from. Subsequently, you can toggle between the currently open Solution (view) and the list of Views by using the Switch Views button in the Solution Explorer Toolbar.
Switch Views in Solution Explorer
Streamlined inner loop Git Changes window
The new Git Changes window is designed to provide quick access to commonly used Git operations that you need while you are coding. You can create new branches, stash, stage, amend, and commit changes, all from the same place without switching pages or losing context. Moving to the top of the window, you’ll see handy fetch, pull, and push buttons. They allow you to sync commits and tags with your remotes (that’s right, multiple remotes!). The Git Changes window also has an indicator displaying the number of outgoing and incoming commits. This indicator functions as a link to take users to the Git Repository window. From there, you can view a summary of your outgoing and incoming commits before you sync.
Staged Changes and Stashes in the Git Changes Window
Full screen Git Repository window
If you like browsing and managing your repository, you no longer need to leave Visual Studio. The new Git experience comes with a rich Git Repository window that makes it easy to visualize the entire history of your repository. You can right click on a branch to perform operations like merge, rebase, reset, and cherry pick. Moreover, the Repository window is accessible through the Git menu, the View menu, and the status bar.
Branch History in the Git Repository Window
Enhanced merge conflict resolution
If you run into a merge conflict, Visual Studio now guides you through the process of resolving it. The Git Changes tool window clearly lists unmerged changes. Also, it displays a status message specifying that conflict resolution is in progress. Further, a gold info bar in the conflicting file prompts you to open the Merge Editor. Once you’re there, the three-way Merge Editor takes you through each conflict in the file. In other words, it allows you to compare lines and even individual word-level differences. Moreover, you can accept all current or incoming changes at the file level with a single click.
Merge Conflict Resolution with the Merge Editor
Customizable experience
We want you to be able to personalize your Git experience. To change any of your preferences at the repository level or the global level, go to Git – Settings in the menu bar. This will take you to the consolidated Tools – Options pane for Source Control.
Git Settings in Tools – Options dialog
However, if these features aren’t working out for you, it’s possible to revert back to the full Team Explorer experience. Go to Tools – Options – Environment – Preview Features and toggle the New Git user experience checkbox. Please let us know why!
New Git user experience Preview Feature flag
This is just the beginning
To summarize, from the new Git menu, you can clone, create, or open repositories. You can use the integrated Git tool windows to commit and push changes to your code, manage branches, sync your remote repositories, and resolve merge conflicts. Find the full list of capabilities in the Release Notes. Learn how to use the features in our documentation. Most importantly, join the conversation on Developer Community to weigh in on what we’re building next. And please provide feedback as we continue to enhance the Git experience in Visual Studio!
196 comments
The list displayed when you select “Local Repositories” takes WAAAAAY to long to load. I just tested it out, and on my beefy machine, it took over 20 seconds from after Visual Studio loaded. This was never the case in the old view.
Will this be fixed, in the next two or three days? If not, someone should be fired.
Visual Studio is offline in 2021
Having played with it longer, sometimes the list NEVER appears. Also, how exactly does one delete and re-add a repo?
This experience has been HORRIFIC.
I’ll double down on my original comments, and say an entire team should be fired.
And believe me, if it wasn’t for the code of conduct that can be summed up as “we can’t handle F bombs”, I would have been dropping a ton here.
Seriously, is Microsoft strapped for cash? This couldn’t have gone through 30 seconds of testing or usability studies.
Thanks for providing more feedback, Jack. We’ve triaged and are investigating the issue. I’d like to request you to provide more information on the ticket so that our team can pick it up without delay.
I’ve also created this feature request for deleting repos. Please vote on it to help us prioritize the work.
And finally, thank you for adhering to the code of conduct. Some of us do find it hard to handle the F bombs. 🙂
I ran into the same problem and wanted to optimize the load speed
Visual Studio is offline in 2021
Excellent upgrade, I use Visual Studio all days and it’s great this integration with Git repositories 🙂
Thanks Nelson, we are happy that you like the new feature. Please feel free to let us know if you have any feedback or questions.
I’ve been using the git experience in preview and have gotten used to it and like it a lot.
Showing my team how to use it, I suddenly couldn’t find the place where you link a work item to the commit. Had this moved? I was doing this on the teams window but the work items now open in a full window and I couldn’t see how you now link?
Thanks for the feedback Anthony, glad that you are getting used to the new experience. Regarding linking a work item to a commit, you can do that by writing “#” in your commit message which will provide a list of work items to chose from. You will need to be connected to ADO for this feature to work. To connect to ADO or to manage your work items, you will need to use Team Explorer (View > Team Explorer). Because we wanted to support GitHub issues, we haven’t been able to do much work to enhance the existing work items experience. More work is needed to provide a unified experience for both git providers. Please feel free to add your vote to this suggestion: link
I’m connected to ADO and nothing happens when I use “#”. Am I missing something?
Hi Chris, that shouldn’t be the case. Please report a problem so that the team can investigate. Thanks!
I have to say I don’t like the new git design, with old Team explorer, we can use git / add /remove/ manage branch / add .gitignore / setting git global setting / manage
git remote and more in just one place .
today , vs make the new git Experience by default.
but you look at it , you will find that to use git , now you need at least to know 3 place : git change + git repository + tool-setting-[source mange]- git + team explorer. what a mess ！！！！！！！
and you know what , the [git tool bar menu] —-[push to git service] only have github, do you kill devops or what?
and Are you serious to use visual studio setting dialog to manage current workspace ? won’t this dialog is about manage visual studio ? since when the visual studio setting care about project/solution file location ?
I am so confused how this made things easier… I’m with you @JohnKing, the most recent version I finally felt like things were getting better, this is such a productivity killer for my day to day, its hard to buy in to “more clicks” == “productivity”
Thanks for the feedback John, Chris, we understand that Team Explorer had a lot of great functionality that many VS users are accustomed to. At the same time we found out that a large population of our git users were complaining about how they had to jump between different pages in Team Explorer to go through their git flows. The quote that we kept hearing says “With Team Explorer you have to go to the branches page to create a new branch. Then go to the changes page to commit your changes. Then go to the sync page to pull and push, etc.” This is something we worked hard to address in the new experience. Now you can use the Git changes window for your light inner loop git operations while coding without having to switch between windows. For example, you can create a new branch, commit, and push all from the Git changes window. Then when you would like to browse your git repository and execute more complicated git commands, you can use the Git repository window where you get more screen real-estate. This is also where we will be able to add more advanced git features in the future.
I totally understand that switching to a new experience can be hard and confusing, but we are here to help. Did you know that you can quickly access git settings through the git menu? We found that most of our git users don’t access their git settings frequently. They change their settings once and never change them again. That is why we grouped git settings with the reset of settings in VS, but made them accessible through search and the git menu.
This is also V1 of the new git experience and we are actively working on it, so please feel free to vote for existing suggestions or create new ones using the following link: New Suggestion
Also feel free to take a quick look at the documentation for the new experience: docs
but do you know the git repository windows is take area of my code area ? and “At the same time we found out that a large population of our git users were complaining about how they had to jump between different pages in Team Explorer to go through their git flows” , come on , now it’s worth , I always want VS Code can have the same git experience like visual studio. and for the issue , the solution is create inside tab for those operation, instead separate team in more place. yes , I like the git menu , but not the new Git UI experience .
Suggestion: use git menu, plus old “Team Explorer” rename to “Source Control” , for git’s operation, use inside tab for swtich , dropdown is not so “directly”
Honestly, those seem like weak arguments for trashing the great integration with Azure DevOps that we had. This is big step backwards for those of us who value the integration between our IDEs and DevOps, just to save some people a couple of clicks. Maybe it’d be worth considering some input from people who do make use of the existing workflows?
I agree entirely. It seem as though they have optimised the wrong areas. I use Changes, then rarer syncing and then even rarer branching in that order. It seems as though they have tried to place Branching, syncing and changes on the same pedestal when they just aren’t used at the same rate.
I fear for the day when Microsoft decide that we must use this newer, worse interface, and drops the superior DevOps based interface.
Yep, it seems many projects and teams at Microsoft are worried about the “new shiny” versus what actually works.
I agree with others here. And I must be honest in that I think that this new UX is complete garbage. It has totally wrecked the integration with Azure DevOps, and more. Most noticeably, two things I used a lot are now broken: Pull Requests inside VS and opening the solution through Team Explorer (on a multi-solution folder). I now open VS and do not even know how to begin to open my solution.
Terrible update. Feels like the team published before testing and/or studying the impact of their changes. This should be eligible for rollback.
Totally agree…can’t launch Azure DevOps to create a pull request via the context-menu on a branch 😥
agree.. useless upgrade if we cant do PR
Add me to the list of not understanding how having a UI that takes up the entire code window is an improvement. I am not sure that I see any functionality being added. About the only difference I see is the history being viewable, but I need to see history an extra context menu click is not an issue. Also as far as I can tell we are missing a Create Pull Request option
Thanks for voicing your feedback, Joe. If you want to see Pull Request functionality integrated into VS, please vote on feature requests such as these for creating PRs or preparing for PRs. If you don’t see an existing suggestion for your request, feel free to create a new one.
I completely agree. I now have to rely on another tool to maintain a project’s git repo due to so many features being stripped out / moved around. Please do not ever take it out of preview as I will not have a way back to the preferred experience.
Thanks for adding your thoughts, Patrick and everyone else on this thread. We’re currently focusing on how we can fix the experience for the folks who have switched off the feature. We’ve started by collecting the large categories of missing/moved/unintuitive functionality through a quick anonymous survey. Please fill it out so we can prioritize accordingly based on your feedback. We do want to make sure the experience supports your workflows in Azure DevOps without you having to switch back to Team Explorer. Thank you!
Agreed. The first thing I did when I saw this — turned it off. I need to remain productive — and this experience was far too different at this point. When I’m not in the middle of having to do work, it might be fine to learn it. When new features are integrated like this one that could end up being productivity killers for users in the middle of projects — you need to have users OPT-IN to turn it on. In the middle of a big project — not a good time.
I agree too. I’m glad this can be turned off. I use Sync daily and could not find it with the new UI. Also, use Command Prompt which might be there in the update but could not find that either. A separate Changes window might be useful but I’ve turned it off because core elements are missing.
I totally agree – the new design sucks. It was way better where all the commands could be round on the right panel – now you have to access multiple locations and bring up more windows – who wants that- the only thing that really needed to be improved was the branches view – it never was clear on the diagram which branch is which – it would be good to have lines with colors and names with the same colors for those – is that hard?
Pratik I like the new Git UI but it seems it seems it broke the ability to read Pull Requests directly from Visual Studio thanks to the Pull Request extension for Visual Studio. Indeed since upgrading my Visual Studio to 16.8.0 I can’t use the Pull Request extension anymore is it something you plan to correct ? This extension was highlighted on this very same blog and is maintained by Microsoft Dev Labs if I a m not mistaken.
Hi Alexandre, thanks for the feedback about the UI. The Pull Request extension is experimental and a part of our DevLabs initiative. As such, we’re not enhancing or maintaining the extension any longer. The reason being that it was built on top of Team Explorer, and we didn’t want to continue adding more features to Team Explorer without addressing the larger issues that we had been seeing; namely – discoverability of features, context switching for simple workflows, and steep learning curve.
Our current approach with the new experience is based on customer feedback. If you want to see Pull Request functionality integrated into VS, please vote on feature requests such as these for creating PRs or preparing for PRs. If you don’t see an existing suggestion for your request, feel free to create a new one. This will help us prioritize the work we focus on next.
You are seriously mistaken if you believe you have improved the context switching scenario. Removing a fundamental feature and making users drop back to an external CLI or some other tool is not an improvement.
Apologies Dave. Our intention is not to permanently remove the feature. Pull Request functionality is on our backlog and we’re iteratively building out the experience. You can follow the feature request to get updates on our next steps. In the meantime, feel free to turn off the feature to get back your regular experience, but please do fill out this quick survey to help us understand your reasoning better.
So any plans to make it easy moving from vsts to git? of course i can just check in everything but we’d loose years of information about changes, comments, etc. etc.. So what are you planning to do about this?
This might be worth taking a look at, I’m assuming you’re talking about TFVC and that you’re using Azure DevOps Server (the new name for the latest version of TFS) – https://www.benday.com/2020/10/21/convert-your-tfvc-source-control-to-git-the-1-most-hidden-feature-in-all-of-azure-devops/
Where is the option to push to a new Azure DevOps Repository, you only seem to have push to GitHub now in the new experience, if you switch back to the old one you get Azure DevOps and GitHub push options?
My question as well.. Love the interface; how can I configure it to use Azure DevOps as well?
Thanks for the question Steve, Tim, to push to Azure DevOps follow these steps:
– Use the “Existing remote” option in the create a Git repository dialog
– Provide a link for an empty Azure DevOps repository
We’re monitoring a request to provide an Azure DevOps repo creation experience similar to GitHub through this suggestion ticket. Could you please add your vote to the ticket to help us prioritize this work? Thanks!
Totally agree – Microsoft just cut the throat on Azure Devops. How is it possible to create a brand new Git Experience – and forget just about everything about Azure DevOps?
Microsoft – it’s a redo!!
Same issue.
With the new Git experience I can’t see Pull Requests tab in Team Explorer window
Thanks for the feedback Фарид Кадыров. The new git experience still doesn’t include Pull Requests. There is a suggestion ticket open already for creating PRs from within the new git experience. But if you are suggesting some other aspect of it, please let us know so that we can create the appropriate suggestion on Developer Community.
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Just click on the develop branch at bottom of window (just left off the notifications icon), or use shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+F3). Use Esc to quit.
We are working with Azure DevOps and like to associate our work items to the commits. Under the old experience this is easily done inside Visual Studio through the Changes windows. In this new Git experience, there seems no way to do that anymore. The “Relate to Changes” function in the Team Explorer/Work Items window also appears to only affect the old Changes window, but not the new Git Changes.
Is that something on your roadmap for future improvements? Without we are likely stuck with the old system as long as it remains supported.
Thanks for the feedback, Tobias. We agree this is important functionality. As Taysser mentioned in another comment, we still need to work on a new design for this mechanism so that we can generalize it to work for both GitHub issues and Azure DevOps work items. We would appreciate your feedback on how you’d like to see this, please vote and comment on the suggestion ticket. We will also post our designs there once they are ready. In the meantime, as a workaround, the capability still exists, you can manually type the #number into the commit message, and the work item will get linked.
I’m not sure if it’s configured somewhere, but if I type “#” how do I control what to show, because it’s only showing one PBI
And would be nice to force the user to select at least one work item to commit
I would like those features
You can help us prioritize the option to enforce work items by voting on this feature request. Thanks!
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SUB-MODULES, SUB-MODULES, SUB-MODULES. VS Code handles them but the premiere IDE does not. Please, please, please, look at how VS code handles sub-modules and implement something!!!!!!
Add the missing features before inventing new ones.
Vote for it here: https://developercommunity2.visualstudio.com/t/full-git-submodule-support/351549
Done way back when. Its been over 2 years and no traction.
Looks nice, but can’t find a way to push a tag.
And i also use subrepositories!
You can push tags in version 16.9 Preview 1! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/release-notes-preview#Git-productivity
For submodule support, please follow this suggestion ticket. We’ll share designs and update it as we start the work – https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/idea/351549/full-git-submodule-support.html
The Git experience inside Visual Studio is awesome!
Thanks Tony! Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns 🙂
Would be nice to be able to select the message from the previously committed messages similar to TortoiseGit.
Thanks for the feedback! We’re monitoring that request through this feature suggestion. Please vote on it to help us prioritize the work on our backlog.
man, I really liked it, thanks so much for that!
Thanks for the kind words William. We are happy you liked it! Please feel free to let us know if you have any feedback.
Stop with the moving stuff just to move it.
Thanks for the feedback Matthew. In this case, we had to revamp our git experience for the following reasons:
1- Discoverability: when we started evaluating our previews git experience, we asked users what they think about the git tooling in VS2019. A very popular answer was “what git tooling? I don’t see any?” Not everyone knew that our git tooling is in Team Explorer. Some users thought that it is only used for TFVC. Others just didn’t make the connection.
2- Context switching: a large population of users who knew Team Explorer complained about the fact that they needed to continually navigate between different pages to go through their git work flow.
3- Learning curve: we also found that it takes users a long time to learn and get used to Team Explorer.
We didn’t want to continue adding more features to Team Explorer without addressing these issues. Otherwise, it will just continue to get more complicated. Our approach with the new experience is based on customer feedback. When it comes to git we found out that there are two types of operations: light inner loop operations that users wanted to do on the side while they are coding and advanced git operations that users wanted to focus on.
Just for people reading this blog post who aren’t familiar with VS and Git, there’s nothing new here – VS has always guided you through the merge process, you’ve always been able to see the history of your repo, you’ve always had blame and staging, etc. etc. Mostly some very valuable integrations with Azure DevOps have been removed. I think it’s worth pointing this out because I’ve seen comments elsewhere that seem to indicate that some people think that these capabilities weren’t in VS before because of the wording in this blog.
Thanks for your feedback Gavin, I have to disagree with you here sir. Let me explain the difference:
VS has always guided you through the merge process
– That is true, but only if you know where to look. For someone who don’t know that they should open Team Explorer to resolve their merge, they thought that we didn’t have a merge resolution experience
– With the new experience, conflicts are way more discoverable even if you are not viewing the git changes window, the editor will provides an entry point
You’ve always been able to see the history of your repo, you’ve always had blame and staging, etc.
– That is true, but there was no easy way to browse and manage your repository in one place. With the new experience, you get a complete picture where you can view branches, the graph, and incoming/outgoing commits at the same time. And this is just the beginning!
– We still haven’t had a chance to enhance our blame experience that is correct, but it is in our roadmap. Stay tuned!
– When it comes to staging, we have added hover icons where you can stage files with a single click. Now we are working on line staging. Stay tuned!
I Love the changes, makes the git interaction more intuitive. Are a git push –force planned any time soon, similar to https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/new-git-features-in-visual-studio-2017/ dropping to shell to complete the workflow is a no go though.
Thanks for the feedback Mikael, you can enable force push today on the new experience using our git settings (Git menu > settings > enable push –force).
My bad, I was on 16.8 Preview 2 and did not get the settings menu item. After updating (in my case to 16.9.0 Preview 1) The -force-with-lease is implemented exactly as i would have wanted it to work. Great job guys!! I love the feature even more 🙂
I cannot find add github enterprise of new git experience.
Please let me know if you know the solution about this.
Thank you in adavance.
Hello dm7169-kim, you can sign-in to GitHub enterprise on the new experience by following the steps documented here
Hello, I don’t found the helpful Synchronize screen to check and manage git actions … so sad !
Thanks for the feedback Stéphane, clicking on the outgoing / incoming link in the Git Changes window will take you to the Git repository window where you can manage your repository and view incoming / outgoing commits. Please let us know if you still can’t find this. Also feel to look at our documentation
Have I missed something on the docs ? I haven’t seen anything about the option of Stashing and I don’t see the option in the new Git Experience / Git changes tab in Visual Studio.
I can see the changes, but I cannot stash them from VS.
The option to Stash is definitely present. It’s in the dropdown button for Commit All. You can see the button here in the docs. And you can see the Stashes list in the Git Changes window. But you’re absolutely right, I noticed we’ve omitted mentioning the command in the documentation. I’ll make sure that’s fixed asap. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks Pratik! I found it.
One last detail for the link you provided:
– click on it -> about:blank#blocked
– inspect element & click the link there : href=”http://Experience 1245034: Work with Tags in the Git Repository window” –> Oops, 404 Error! That page can’t be found.
Thanks for catching the typo. Fixed it!
Pratik, I love the project management tools built into VS with TFS, so I can associate a check-in with a work item, either as associated or resolving the issue. Will this new Git Experience do the same thing?
Thanks for the feedback, Falanga. We agree this is important functionality. We are exploring a new design for this mechanism so that we can generalize it to work for both GitHub and Azure DevOps. We’d appreciate your feedback on how you’d like to see this, please vote and comment on the suggestion ticket. We will also post our designs there once they’re ready. In the meantime, as a workaround, the capability still exists, you can manually type the #number into the commit message, and the work item will get linked.
I like the look and the usability of the new Git Experience, but I’m missing the possibility to add a workitem to a commit.
Furthermore it would be nice, to be able to create a pull request from within Visual Studio.
Thank you for the feedback, Markus. Similar to what I mentioned above, please vote on the suggestion ticket so that we can prioritize the work sooner. In the meantime, you can add a work item to the commit by typing in the #number into the commit message. As long as you are connected to your remote, when you push, the work item will get linked.
For Pull Requests, we are still figuring out what aspect of the PR process adds the most value integrated within VS. There is a suggestion ticket open already for creating PRs from within VS Git experience. But if you are suggesting some other aspect of it, please let us know so that we can create the appropriate suggestion on Developer Community.
Nice new git features but why is the SYNC BUTTON gone. It was so easy to use pull and push at the same time.
Thanks for the feedback, Valentin. If you want to Sync when committing, then the Commit button has a dropdown that allows you to do that. We’ve also built in the mechanism to do a pull automatically if you try to push with unpulled commits. If you’re really missing a stand-alone Sync button, then please vote on this feature request to help us prioritize the work.
Thank you for the updates to Visual Studio 2019. I am having a problem with it and am not sure if it is just me or if others have also reported it. After upgrading to 16.8.1 version this morning, I don’t see anything under Solution Explorer. I am able to clone the repo without any issues. The only items showing in the Team Explorer tab are the Azure DevOps Server, Project, and Git feature have moved groups. When I switch to Solution Explorer, it is totally empty and only the “Settings” icon is enabled.
What could it be? Corrupt cache? Something else?
Hi Aravind, thanks for letting us know about this issue. We’re going to need to investigate with more details, because cloning a repo should populate Solution Explorer after the clone has completed. Could you please report a problem via the tool with the steps you took?
In the meantime, try cloning through the menu, Git – Clone a repository, or open a repo through Git – Local Repositories. And see if that solves the issue.
Thanks for the quick response. Just wanted to update that the workaround you had does work. When I connect to the repository (it is already cloned locally) using the Git->Clone Repository (choose Browse a Repository -> Azure DevOps), then it does show the solution and the files in the Solution Explorer. It just does not work if you do it via the Team Explorer (Connect and double click to choose the repo).
Everything is now somewhere else, hidden, never to be found again. Worst update ever. Good luck figuring out how to switch repositories without reading this post, no one likes nested file menus. Good luck finding the sln you need in a sea of sll’s, how about respecting the folder structure? The full screen branches is dumb, why, the compact branches sidebar was so much better. The one good change, is merging, a lot easier now, good bye combobox drop down scrolling madness.
OK, maybe second worst after you guys broke the Diff for 6 like months
Hi George, thanks for the feedback. Do let us know what you’re unable to find, we know that changing muscle memory is not the easiest thing. The good thing about adding commands to the menu system is that you can hit Ctrl+Q (global search) to locate any VS command so you don’t have to always remember where something is.
For your solution, you can toggle the solution list in the Solution Explorer to get to the sln you need in your repo. If you have a lot, you can use the search bar in Solution Explorer to filter the list.
The Git changes window also has a branch list dropdown that you can perform actions from, which is much simpler to access than the full screen Git Repository window. If there’s a feature missing there, please let us know by creating a feature request.
And finally, I’m glad you like the new changes to the merge experience! Please do check out the top Git suggestions and continue to provide feedback on the changes you want to see.
if I access the Git Changes window and hit the “X” (close window) how do I get the Git Changes window back?
Hi Jose, good question. There are a few ways to get the window back:
1. View menu -> Git Changes (Alt+V, G)
2. Git menu -> Commit or stash.. (Alt+G, C)
3. Global keybinding -> Ctrl+0, Ctrl+G
4. Pencil icon in the Status Bar (Ctrl+Alt+F7)
Whichever is the most convenient for you 🙂
Personally I love Azure Devops. I noted most git users don’t trust Visual Studio for git operations.
It seems the still usable feature just got all the more complicated.
Hi kiti, thank you for the feedback. We are working to ensure the Azure DevOps experience doesn’t get degraded. Can you let us know which features got complicated by submitting feedback so that our team can investigate?
I like where you are going with these features, but in update 16.8.2 I had to disable the preview features because the changes window was acting very buggy, not updating after actions were taken.
Maybe next release will be more solid.
Hi John, thanks for surfacing that feedback. Our team is jumping on any bugs that are being reported and patching them in servicing updates to 16.8. Could you please report the issue with repro steps so that we can investigate and fix it asap?
I’ve got to say this is absolutely horrible. I can’t start a project locally now and create a repo within DevOps all from within VS which is what I’ve done for years. As an organisation we’re not going to fork out for GitHub Enterprise to maintain private repos when DevOps already offers that so we’re just going to have to create empty repos first, clone them to the machines and then place the new solutions within the empty folder. Very farcical.
As for the new ui, it’s ugly and having new windows pop up for branch management seems like a step back 10 years.
Thanks for the feedback, Joseph. We haven’t been able to prioritize this feature yet. But we’ve got our eye on it and monitoring the request through this suggestion ticket on Developer Community. Could you please add your vote to the ticket to help us prioritize this work? In the meantime, an easier way for you to execute this flow through Visual Studio is to create an empty new repository from Azure DevOps and paste the link of the newly created repo in the Existing Remote section of the Create a Git repository dialog box.
This iteration is v1 of release and we’re not done yet. We’ll continue to work on adding and finetuning features based on customer feedback. Take a look at some of our top community suggestions to help us prioritize our upcoming roadmap.
Hi! You are doing a great job with git experience!
I know you are still working on this, but i have just a question. When I started using this experience, I tried to associated a work item and I used # (like github) and it worked perfect! But then i figured out that i coudn’t find work items from other projects. The old experiencie allowed that.. Will the new experience support to associate work items from another projects?
Hi Christian, thanks for the feedback! Yes we’re monitoring that request here. Please vote it up to receive updates as we prioritize this feature area.
Well, it’s definitely an “experience”. I often had to close Visual Studio and reopen it just to get things to update correctly in the Git Changes window. Clunky and slow. Where is “Create a Pull Request” now? We can’t be productive at all with the current state of this… and we are paying a lot for Visual Studio and Azure DevOps.
We’ll be unchecking the “New Git user experience” option in settings.
Sorry to hear that, Curtis. We are investigating the issue with Git Changes not updating. We’ll update you when we have a fix, and hopefully you’ll be willing to try the experience again.
In regards to creating pull requests, this was part of the Pull Request extension. It is experimental and a part of our DevLabs initiative. As such, we’re not enhancing or maintaining the extension any longer. The reason being that it was built on top of Team Explorer, and we didn’t want to continue adding more features to Team Explorer without addressing the larger issues that we had been seeing; namely – discoverability of features, context switching for simple workflows, and steep learning curve.
Our current approach is to build these features with the new integrated Git experience. Please vote on the request to add this functionality to VS so that we can prioritize what we focus on next. Thanks!
I really miss the little solution area on the “HomePage” of the TeamExploer.
It used to list all the solution files in the repository, or switch for folder-view.
Did not find it anywhere, so turned off the new git experience.
Hi Ole, thanks for bringing that up. You can find the list of solution files as well as folder view now in Solution Explorer. Read more about the new feature in our docs. Please try turning on the experience and giving it a shot. And do let us know if that doesn’t work out for you!
But why are partial stages/hunks still not a thing? Android Studio makes it so easy to separate your changes into commits based on their logic.
Great question, Julius. We understand how useful line staging can be. And that’s coming up next on our roadmap. Please vote on the feature request to get updates, and keep an eye out!
New Git design is missing such a great button as “Sync”. What was the reason to remove it and is it possible to return this functionality?
Hi Anatoliy, thanks for the feedback. If you want to Sync when committing, then the Commit button has a dropdown that allows you to do that. We’ve also built in the mechanism to do a pull automatically if you try to push with unpulled commits. If you still prefer a stand-alone Sync button, then please vote on this feature request to help us prioritize the work.
How do I cancel a merge with conflicts as sometimes I don’t want to resolve the conflicts? This used to be simple, but now it just proclaims that there are conflicts and I can’t find a way via the new UI to cancel the merge.
Thanks for the question, Scott. This functionality is still available in the Git Changes window. Clicking on the Abort button will cancel the merge. Please report a problem if that doesn’t work out for you.
The new Git experience seems to add more model dialogs. For example when merging branch or creating a new branch, it pops up a modal dialog. I find modal dialogs intrusive, so I’m not a big fan.
Hi Jukka, thanks for the feedback. I’ve gone ahead and created a new feature request to track this suggestion. The team will discuss and see what we can do here. We’ll post updated designs on the ticket. So please vote it up so that we can prioritize it sooner.
Prior to the new Git user experience, I would stage, commit, sync and lastly push (4 operations). Now I stage and then can chose “commit staged”, “commit staged and push” or “commit staged and sync”. How do I commit staged, sync and push?
Hi Steve, that’s a good question. There are a few ways to do that. Sync is just a combination of pull and push commands executed sequentially. So you can:
1. Commit staged and sync
2. Pull, commit staged and push
3. Fetch, commit staged and push (this kicks in our new streamlined push workflow that recommends you to ‘Pull and Push’ in case your local branch isn’t up to date)
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
It’s an excellent object lesson in how to turn a rubbish interface into a truly crappy one. On the plus side, I now feel better about my pretty ordinary UIs!
Hi Jim, would you be willing to elaborate on what you think is ‘crappy’ about the experience? Feel free to also vote on our top feature requests in Developer Community to add your voice to what you would like improved.
The loss off the genuinely nice integration with AzureDevOps is a major deal breaker to me and the rest of my team and we had to go back to using the legacy view since we found the ability to manage our work items within Visual Studio to be a lot more convienent and required less mental context switching versus having to hop back and forth between VS and the browser. I really hope that this is not the “finished” product and you intend to add in an updated version of the Azure DevOps work item editor. In the very least, I suppose having a view that uses WebView2 or something similar that lets you see AzureDevOps without having to leave the VS app may be a good compromise.
Edit: I added similar feedback to this ticket, I am not sure if you feel it is the same thing.
Thank you for the feedback Stephen. This is definitely not the final version of the experience. We will continue to iterate and improve upon the functionality based on customer input like yours. Work item integration is on our roadmap. Appreciate that you commented and voted on the ticket. It helps us prioritize the work.
Not related with git, but last Visual Studio version removes Find in files (ctrl + shift + f) even if it is pinned when you use (ctrl + f). This shouldn’t happen or at least there should be an option to disable this new behaviour. It’s so frustrating and weird to see one pinned section dissapear just for pressing ctrl + f.
Hey Carlos,
I’m not completely sure what you’re running into, so can you reach out to me directly? The easiest way is via twitter (@DanteGagne). I’m the Program Manager who is responsible for the Editor and that includes the Find in Files feature. I want to understand what you’re seeing and see if we can get it taken care of.
Hey Carlos, I spoke with my Engineering team and this was a bug. It should be fixed in VS 2019 Update 9. Sorry about the inconvenience.
After having used v16.8.2 I had to ask myself: “Where the f*** are my local repositories?” Back in the yesterday, recent local repositories were listed under “Connect”, which now only displays an empty void.
But wait, here they are: Toolbar > Git > Local Repositories > … up to 50 repositories listed, out of my 816.
Thanks Obama.
-S
Hi Sigurd, thanks for the feedback. This is the first iteration of the new Local Repositories list and we are already designing an improvement. 816 is a lot of repositories though! How many do you normally use/need to see? We have a few feature proposals that may be valuable to you. Check them out and please vote on what you would like implemented –
Search through repositories
Sort repositories in most recently used order
Group and organize repositories
If you do development as a consultant, 816 is not that high of a count. Just think about it, one repository per customer, or possibly a repository per project for a customer. The number could easily be in the thousands. Not everyone is developing one software application for license. Also, what about extension builders, or NuGet package makers? They easily could have hundreds of repositories for each extension of package.
Changes to UX should be optional extensions. If a large enough group of people install and use it (which we know you can track), then you could consider rolling it into the main UX. Thank goodness you kept an option to disable it or else the chorus would be a lot louder on this one.
The new design is awful and confusing as hell, the old layout worked really well and you trashed it to save some people a few clicks?
Hi Glyn, could you please elaborate on what is awful and confusing? You can create a feedback ticket on Developer Community as well. We’ll try to make our improvements to the experience going forward fit your needs.
Is there a way to turn this new view off and get the old one back?
Yes, you can turn off the experience with the Preview Feature toggle.
Was very excited to see that this new version was to offer a better merge conflict solution, and upgraded straight away…. But I personally regret pressing that update now button. Spent 1 day trying to work with this new update, everything is all over the place for ease/speed of use. Finally found the opt out of this new experience and with a sigh of relief the better old way of navigating the repository is back. Shame but I am hoping the new merge conflict feature is still active even with the old navigation within team explorer.
Sorry for the inconvenience Matthew. The updated merge editor is part of the new Git experience. We’d appreciate if you could fill out this quick 3-minute survey to help us better understand why you opted out of the experience.
While it seems like the new GIT changes have some nice expanded functionality, it feels to me like a step backward:
1- The “sync” link is gone. Where is it? In previous versions, after doing a local commit, I clicked Sync and then the Sync link, and it did both a pull and a push. Now the pull and a push require 2 separate clicks; and they’re tiny little icons so I have to be careful to do the right 2 clicks and in the right order. PLEASE bring back the sync link/button, to consolidate pull and push, as an alternative to doing those separately. I already have to perform 1 billion clicks every day and it’s nice when that gets reduced a bit. Previously it was 2 clicks: Sync -> Sync (again). Would love to see instead, after a local commit, to be presented with a one-click Sync that does it all. (No second sync link to click please.)
2- I really don’t like being constantly launched into a separate full-screen Git window that is modal and on top of VS, and I have to close it to get to VS again. I liked the old way: everything is in nice tabs/panels. Yes, there was some going back and forth between tabs/panels, but I found that manageable and comfortable. This new full screen window feels like being shoved into the swimming pool from behind when I wasn’t ready, and in fact didn’t want to get wet at all.
THANK YOU for at least providing the checkbox in Options to revert to the old way – which I have done. I could embrace the new way if the 2 items above could be fixed.
Totally understand, Herriman. And thank you for the feedback.
1. If you want to sync when committing, the Commit button has a dropdown that allows you to do just that, in one click. We’ve also built the mechanism to do a pull for you if you try to push with unpulled commits. So you should never get into the situation of clicking the buttons in the wrong order. That said, if you still prefer a stand-alone Sync button, please vote on this feature request to help us prioritize the work.
2. Not sure what you mean by the Git window that is modal. The Git Repository window is a docked tab in VS and you can move it like any other tool window to be located in any part of the IDE. It can also be placed underneath other tabs or pinned. Can you explain the issue you’re seeing that forces you to ‘close it to get to VS again’?
And finally, I would appreciate if you could fill out this quick 3-minute survey to help us better understand why you opted out of the experience. We’re focusing on categorizing the different buckets to help us prioritize what to focus on first.
Dear oh dear what have you done Microsoft!?! Give us back something that works. Where’s the DevOps integration!?! Awful, awful update.
Sorry to hear that Gary. It would help us to understand what part of the Azure DevOps integration you are missing by responding to this survey. Thanks!
I’ll be honest, this really just feels like what all loyal users of superb Azure Devops have been fearing, abandonment in favour of github.
That to one side the UI itself seems poorly designed and not in keeping with the rest of Visual Studio.
It’s almost like there is no Design System or Component Library and the developers have made it up as they go?
Thanks for the feedback Dean. I’ll forward it on to our Design team. The intention was not to abandon Azure DevOps, but rather we’ve been introducing features iteratively. It would help us prioritize where to focus on with the missing integration if you could fill out this survey. Appreciate it!
Small question, Can we raise Pull request using it ? If yes, how ?
Hi Kushal, not yet unfortunately. We have this feature on our backlog. Please vote on it to get updates and help us prioritize it on our roadmap.
I don’t like the fact we lost the easy access Azure DevOps – Publish Git Repo. Before it was as simple as:
1) Add Source Control
2) Select Azure DevOps in Team Explorer, click Publish Git Repo and click Publish Repository
The first thing I did was to disable the “New Git Experience”. Sorry, but if you make a change don’t hide previous way to do things, simple add the new ones.
Hi Alex, thanks for the feedback. We’re monitoring this request through this suggestion ticket on Developer Community. Could you please add your vote to the ticket to help us prioritize this work? In the meantime, it is still possible for you to execute this flow through Visual Studio. To accomplish this:
1. Go to your Azure DevOps project in the browser and create an empty new repository from there
2. Paste the link of the newly created repo in the Existing Remote section of the Create a Git repository dialog box.
Completely understand that you switched off the experience. But we’re trying to collect the large themes we’re seeing here to better focus our efforts. Could you help us by filling out this short survey?
Kindly upload the video on youtube or channel9, so we have a chance to see what is being displayed.
Otherwise I think that this is an update that I do not see much benefit in. You should make it possible to keep the old UI
Hi Mohammad, we indeed have an introductory video available for you to see what the new experience can do for you. Please check it out!
You can also turn off the feature from within Visual Studio to get back Team Explorer. If you do so, please let us know why by filling out this quick survey. Thanks!
I like the idea of the new branch view, but it is very slow and flickering when switching between the branches.
But in general I do not like the “new experience”:
1. It is buggy: Checking out new branch will sometimes not update the “Git Changes” view.
2. It is not intuitive:
* Why the “Git Repository” is shown when I click on “outgoing/incoming”?
* The icons for “Fetch” and “Pull” are difficult to distinguish.
3. I still cannot find an option for “force push” even the option “Enable push” is enabled.
Hi Lukas, thanks for the feedback. Not sure about the flickering and bugs. The team has been responding to feedback tickets that have been raised about performance and quality. It would be best if you could report a problem through Visual Studio and capture your screen when this is happening, so we can investigate the issue.
The outgoing and incoming commits are now shown at the top of the branch history. You can see all the unpulled and unpushed commits in a list and also click them for details. There are also handy pull and push buttons for you to sync the commits to your local branch.
We’ve heard the feedback for the icons before and are considering variations. Please vote on this open suggestion. We’ll post updates there.
The use case for force push is when your remote branch has updates that you want to overwrite. So we only surface the option in the streamlined push dialog when you have unpulled commits and you are trying to push without pulling them. In all other cases, you can just use regular push.
Hi VS Team,
I’m using latest version of these changes, however, now a fetch, pull, or push I get “Error encountered while fetching: Failed to fetch from the remote repository. See the Output window for more details.” However, everything appears to work fine. I can push, pull, and fetch it just continually gives that error? I’m using DevOps. Any ideas?
FYI – The output window just says the same message.
Hi Justin, this sounds like an issue we’ve seen before. We think that you might have an old version of Git for Windows (Program Files installation) that is getting referenced from Visual Studio’s Git installation. To debug this, you can run ‘git –version’ on the command line. And if you get something lower than 2.29, then please update your Git for Windows. Please refer to this feedback ticket for details, and engage with the team if this doesn’t solve your issue. Thanks!
I really like the new Git experience and it is great to have local repositories listed. However, our .sln file lies outside of the Git folder (we are using CMake to generate everything in a build folder on a different hard drive). So when I open the local repository, VS closes the currently open solution and just shows the content of the build folder. When I then open the solution (from recent solutions), VS exits the just opened repository. So it is not possible to have the correct solution and repository selected at the same time and I also cannot get the Git changes window to show the changes within the repository folder.
Thanks for raising this issue Aaron. Our current design model requires a tight coupling between your code and your repository in order to align all the context in Visual Studio to be under ‘one workspace’ in one instance. And that’s why VS isn’t allowing you to open code (in Solution Explorer) that is outside the repository you’ve opened, and vice-versa. That’s great feedback to hear though, it lets us know we need to reconsider this approach. I opened a feature request for you to vote and follow.
What a load of rubbish.
Firstly I couldn’t even find my list of local repos, I had to either open a solution that was in a repo or open a folder containing a repo.
I was then able to see my branches, but I can’t see how to merge. I right-click on a branch as per usual and all I see is Pull. Cherry pick and View History were greyed out and I don’t even see options to merge, branch, etc.
Thankfully I was able to turn this nonsense off.
Maybe instead of “fixing” things that aren’t broken you can spend some time fixing the things that have been broken for years, like the constant “object not set to an instance of an object” error that I consistently get when trying to do simple git operations, resulting in me having to close and reopen Visual Studio just to do a commit or merge
Sorry to hear that Paul. It sounds like Git hadn’t loaded correctly when you tried to first find your local repos. Once you opened a solution or folder, were you able to see the list within the top menu Git -> Local Repositories?
Once you open the Git Repository window, you’ll be able to see your branch list, which has the full experience for merge, rebase, cherry-pick, etc in the context menu. If you are not seeing these, please report a problem so the team can investigate.
Understandably you wanted to turn the experience off. What would help us immensely is if you could fill out this quick survey enumerating the reasons why. This will allow us to prioritize feature areas and focus our efforts. Thanks!
It looks nice. I having trouble to find how to push tags from VS 2019. I have pushed my commits, but now I want to push my tag. Feature gone?
The feature unfortunately doesn’t exist in version 16.8. You’ll have to wait until 16.9 releases to push tags from within Visual Studio 2019. Alternatively, if you use the Preview version, we’ve built the functionality in version 16.9 Preview 1. Please try it out!
I got so confused when I did the update. I have to try this for a while to give my final review.
But as it is now the “Git changes” window defiantly needs some color schemes for added, modified, and so on like VS code have since all we see now I an M or A.
I Like the Graph in the Git Repository window but I would rather have a more compressed window that doesn’t take up all the space in my Code window, as the old Teams Explorer.
Thanks for trying it out Thomas. Appreciate the feedback here. Feel free to create feature requests for these. We already have an existing suggestion for modifying the layout of the Git Repository window that you can vote on.
I find the new way of working with this preview for git counter intuitive and a step back. (high level so far that I have used it) Of course I will give some small examples. The git changes view now has very small icons instead of the word of the actions. The Synchronization overview in Team explorer that also popped up when you pressed the icons on the bottom now opens a tab across your view. This being the branches instead of the synchronization part. I also miss the branch view how it was within the Team Explorer. I notice that it’s less responsive when switching branches and fetching. I sometimes have to click fetch multiple times. For the branches I need to right click and do checkout to get it to switch faster. For me the team explorer was really nice. I give git training to on boarders or people coming over from TFVC etc. For them and me the Team Explorer was close to perfect. The connection with DevOps projects and linking isn’t that intuitive anymore. The # works but I liked the previous way a lot more. I do appreciate some changes and I’m glad there is the right attitude. I just feel like some changes aren’t right mostly on the UX side. Thanks for you time.
Hey thanks for all the feedback, Bert. We’ve noticed similar comments from other customers and have collated most of those suggestions in a single list. Feel free to vote and comment on the suggestions to add your voice. If there’s something you don’t see, then please create a new feature request for each topic. And for the issues in responsiveness and multiple clicks, please report a problem with repro steps so the team can investigate. Thanks!
Where’s the ‘Add related workitem’ button/feature? It’s one of the most important features, how can it be missing?
You can add work items to a commit using the #number of the work item. For Azure DevOps, this gives you a dropdown list of work items that you can search and select from. If you would like a separate dedicated section for work items, then please vote and comment on this feature request.
Why O, Why O ,Why O, do you change the look and feel when it was 100%okay before – all you have done is make it slower to load. To Echo the words of my fellow programmers this is HORRIFIC to use.
Hi Mike, it would be really helpful for us to know what part of the experience loads slower. Can you please submit a report? If you’ve turned it off, filling out this quick survey will allow us to better prioritize how to improve it. Thanks!
Opening the “Git Changes”-Tab doesn’t work using the shortcut ctrl+e, ctrl+c or clicking on the Up-Arrow in the status bar (this used to open the changes pane in team explorer
Hi Tim, yes that’s correct we’ve remapped those shortcuts to the Git Repository window. To open Git Changes, you can click the pencil icon in the status bar (that indicates number of uncommitted changes). You can also use the shortcut “Ctrl+0, G” or “Alt+G,C”. Please let us know if that doesn’t work for you, thanks!
I don’t seem to find “Merge From” option. How do I update my child branch from master now?
Hi Himanshu, yes you can definitely do that in the new experience. Just check out the ‘child’ branch. Then right click on ‘master’ and select the option to merge ‘master’ into ‘child’. We simplified the wording ‘merge from’ since we observed developers getting confused. But let us know how that works out for you, thanks!
It is f***ing disaster
Hi Genko, it would be great if you could elaborate on that. In addition, if you’ve opted out of the experience, please fill out this quick anonymous survey to help us categorize and prioritize the reasons as to why. Thanks!
https://prnt.sc/vzphh0
The old way worked fine, this just irritates me as I used to click the up arrow in the footer to do push/pull, now that takes me to the full screen git page, all I want to do is push or pull. MS always fiddling with things…
Sorry to hear that Lachlan. To give you a bit of explanation – the full screen Git Repository window is where you can see the list of your outgoing and incoming commits before you push or pull. That’s why the arrow takes you there. If you want to push/pull quickly without going to larger window, you can do so from the branches dropdown in the status bar or from the ‘on the side’ Git Changes window. In addition, it sounds like you may want some customizability in the layout of the larger window to make it more compact. Please vote on this feature request to help us prioritize it. And we’re also considering a single click Sync button for pull and push. You can follow the ticket for updates.
As a professional developer with 15+ years of experience all I can profesionally say is: WTF is this piece of garbage update?? You remove the hability to see Pull request and Checkout branches from Visual Studio? Are you drunk, nutz or just dumb??
Yes that is my professional comment
Hi Christian, I understand your frustration. But I’m happy to say that we’ve begun work on integrating pull requests (previously as an extension) into the IDE. Please follow the ticket to get updates. Also you can definitely check out branches in the new Git experience. The full branch list is available in the Git Repository window. You can access it by the menu Git -> Manage Branches. Hope this helps!
Today I switched the new git experience off. In my opinion it’s a big back step backwards. If people want the “real” git experience… use the commandline?
Hi Victor, thanks for your comment. We’re looking to find out the main reasons as to why folks are turning the experience off. Can you please fill out this quick survey to help us categorize the areas we need to focus on?
Really wish you had kept the ability to use the old version in the latest update to Visual Studio. I have been trying the new tool, and I am at a loss as to how MS looked at this UI as an improvement compared to something that ran in the side panel. I am trying to work with it and understand the advantages. I am not seeing additional functionality (only the loss of pull requests – already under review it seems) just that I need to navigate using a different workflow and now my screen is completely taken up. Please bring back the ability to use the old tool. Another thing is that to checkout a different branch I need to use a context menu instead of simply double clicking
Thanks for your feedback Joe. You can still switch off the feature to get back full Team Explorer. If you do so, please also fill out this short survey to help us categorize your reasons and better prioritize what to focus on.
The main reasons we revamped the design were to improve discoverability and to reduce context switching among different panes in Team Explorer. Our main goal was to rebuild the foundation in this release, and so we don’t have that many new features. Our merge conflict resolution experience has been enhanced and a few other features have been streamlined. But a lot of the new additional functionality that we’ve been planning will be coming soon. Check out our top suggestions that we’re using to influence our roadmap.
This feature does not allow the Related work item to connect while check in the code.
I had to remove the new feature checkbox as to go on the old option where while check-in my code i can connect it to my work item.
Hi Swapnil, thank you for the feedback. We agree this is important functionality. We are exploring a new design for this mechanism so that we can generalize it to work for both GitHub and Azure DevOps. We would appreciate your feedback on how you’d like to see this, please vote and comment on the suggestion ticket. We will also post our designs there once they are ready. In the meantime, as a workaround, the capability still exists, you can manually type the #number into the commit message, and the work item will get linked.
And please help us better understand why you opted out of the experience by filling out this quick 3-minute anonymous survey. This will allow us to collect the broader themes we’re seeing to better focus our efforts.
For me, the solution explorer is empty when no solution is opened. The only buttons available are back, forward, home, and properties.
Hi Fredrik, I think you might need to open a repository first in order to see your solutions/folders in Solution Explorer. Have you tried going to the Git menu -> Local Repositories?
Worse UX design ever. Why mess with functionality that worked fine with Team Explorer? Yes, I changed it back. How about making this type a thing an extension, for people who have nothing better to do then play with how their tool looks? Me, I need my tool to be stable so I can get my job done.
Hi Timothy, we agree that the functionality has to be stable, so thank you for the feedback. And that’s why we provided the option to opt out. We’ve been iterating on the experience since March with customers, but naturally we may have missed out on something. It would help us greatly to better understand why you switched off the feature by filling out this quick survey. Thanks!
Where is the merge option? I updated to 2019 16.8.3 recently and I am totally lost. some things are nice and cool but somehow I am totally lost. May be after using for sometime I might get habituated. But at the moment as I was not able to find a merge option I turned it off.
I totally agreed. It took my one hour to merged the branches. Annoying.
Hi Sriman and Usama, you can find the merge option if you open the Git Repository window (Git -> Manage Branches). From there, you’ll see your branch list on the left side pane. You can right-click any branch to get all your available options, include merge branches. Hope this helps and you’ll give it another try!
Anyone else having flashbacks to the New Project Dialog downgrade?
Hi Chuck, the difference here is that we’ve kept the ability to turn off the new experience through the Preview Features checkbox, even after GA. 🙂 We want you to continue to be productive while we gather feedback from the community and address issues. In that regard, if you’ve opted out of the experience, please fill out this quick survey to help us better understand the reasons, and focus our efforts. Thanks!
Sorry guys, appreciate the effort you’ve put in to developing this new UI, but it’s just change for the sake of change. We finally get stable Git integration into Visual Studio and you decide to change everything and start again with a list of bugs and missing features. Please don’t remove the original Git integration and force us all to take this.
Thanks for the feedback, Paul. That’s exactly the reason we’ve kept the checkbox to toggle off the new experience. There are definitely bugs and issues we are addressing now, but on average we’ve been seeing positive response and usage of the new functionality. It’s more discoverable, has less context switching and is faster to learn. If you see anything not working, reporting the issue really helps us fix it asap.
So where exactly are all these positive responses because, once again, you tell us about them but we do not get to see them?
Not Good. I am regretting why I updated to new version in the middle of the projects. Totally non user friendly design. Missing old team explorer design where I can easily merge and work with my DevOps repositories.
Hi Usama, I understand your frustration. We are seeing that the forced change in muscle memory from Team Explorer takes some time to get used to. You can perform all your branch actions in the Git Repository window and the Git menu has your list of repositories to switch. We are working on updated designs as we iterate to make the functionality more friendly. Please feel free to switch off the experience, and respond to this short survey so we can understand your reasons. This will help us focus our efforts on fixing the bigger issues.
On the former Team Explorer we could attach a work-item (such as bug \ task) to GIT-commits.
I can’t find where can we do it now on Git Changes window?
Yeahhh… not a fan of this version (VS2019).
How do I revert to the prior version?
一直使用git功能，非常喜欢，但是更新后出现提交非常慢，提交一次要消耗几个小时的时间，而且之前的界面非常好用，新的这个git界面体验真的太差了，如果用100评分的话，我给只能给1分
Somehow magically, the option to create new Azure Devops Repos is no longer there anywhere. We have so many projects hosted on Azure Devops and wanted to keep it that way for a while but it seems with the ‘improvements’ a very useful feature is gone. I wish I hadnt even upgraded.
I hate it. It replaced nicely nested right click submenus with a bunch of buttons…
Seems like it just takes more work/clicks to accomplish the same task, sure the UI looks nicer but I don’t use VS for how nice it looks.
The integration to Devops just seems bad as well.
This is just horrible!
Now not only the window is super-slow and redraws ten times on each click, but also you don’t have a combined view of all branches
How this can be an improvement ???