Today we’re inviting you to try out Visual Studio 2022 for Mac as we share our first private preview release. This is the first release of our .NET IDE with a refreshed, fully native macOS UI. We’d love for you to download it, try it out, and share your feedback to help us shape the next major release of Visual Studio for Mac.
The Visual Studio 2022 for Mac preview can be installed side-by-side with earlier versions of Visual Studio for Mac and is free to use.
Our goal with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac is to make a modern .NET IDE tailored for the Mac that delivers the productive experience you’ve come to love in Visual Studio. This release focuses on:
- Improving IDE performance and reducing crashes with a new fast and fluid native macOS UI.
- Taking advantage of more of macOS’s built-in accessibility features.
- Updating the experience to feel more familiar between Mac and Windows.
With this private preview, we’d like to share our new native macOS UI and hear from you about what we got right and where we need to keep iterating. Visual Studio 2022’s fully native UI is the result of an engineering effort that included substantial changes to the UI layer with a focus on some key technical internals. With these major investments, we are setting the stage to deliver improved stability and performance in the final release. This update affects every part of Visual Studio for Mac, so the scope is much bigger than our usual previews.
A fast and fluid experience, for everyone
We’re moving Visual Studio for Mac to native macOS UI, which will fix over 100 previously reported issues related to performance, reliability, and product quality. An added benefit of using native macOS UI is that the IDE works more smoothly with macOS’s built in assistive technologies. Some of the biggest improvements for accessibility include support for new High Contrast themes and a more intuitive experience with VoiceOver. In this initial preview release, we’re giving you a glimpse at the IDE and have focused on the main features .NET developers use to build applications for the web. The video below gives you a quick feel for some of the improvements made to improve the speed and fluidity of the UI.
A modern .NET IDE hand-tailored for the Mac
We’ve introduced a new look and feel in Visual Studio for Mac that combines the modern macOS UI with the productive experience you’ve come to know and love in Visual Studio. Some of the most visible changes include a footer status bar, new tab model for documents/tool window, and refreshed light & dark themes.
A more familiar experience for Visual Studio users
The updates to Visual Studio for Mac’s UI aren’t just visual. As part of our goal to make the developer experience more consistent between Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac, we’ve made changes to menus and terminology across the IDE. These adjustments were made with consideration for both the Visual Studio and macOS experience with the intent that developers will have an easier time following tutorials written for Windows and using existing muscle memory to find options. We’re also bringing the new Git experience from Visual Studio to the Mac, starting with the Git Changes tool window.
Looking ahead to the first public preview
Our team has high standards for the quality of this release and is working on a list of known issues we want to fix before sharing out a larger public preview. These future previews will also include changes such as a new preferences UI, tool window drag and drop, and a Git branch selector in the status bar. Check out our recently updated roadmap to learn more.
Keep sending us your feedback!
We’ve been working hard to address issues developers encounter when using Visual Studio for Mac on a daily basis, with a particular focus on reducing crashes and hangs. Your bug reports are very important to us as we continue to improve the product – please keep those suggestions and problem reports coming! You can use the Help > Report a Problem or Help > Provide a Suggestion menus to share feedback, or go to the Visual Studio for Mac Developer Community site to vote for those that impact you the most.
Help shape Visual Studio 2022
Take the first steps to becoming part of the future of Visual Studio 2022 for Mac by signing up below. Once you’ve signed up, installed, and had a chance to try out the private preview, we’d love your thoughts on what we did well and how we can continue to improve.
@Jordan, I’ve signed up for the preview with filling the survey, but how can I download the preview version?
@Jordan Are emails still being sent out? Signed up a few days ago but have not received any email yet.
Thanks!
Really need it so much!!!! 🤩
by Chinese Dotnet Developer!!!
Hi,
Does it support mac os 10.13 ?
thanks.
Whenever I build a new dotnet MAUI app with Visual Studio for Mac 17.0 build 2626, I get the following error:
/Users/marius/Projects/GOL.MAUI/GOL/GOL/ILLINK: Error MT2301: The linker step 'Setup' failed during processing: This version of Microsoft.MacCatalyst requires the MacCatalyst 15.0 SDK (shipped with Xcode 13.0). Either upgrade Xcode to get the required header files or set the managed linker behaviour to Link Framework SDKs Only in your project's iOS Build Options > Linker Behavior (to try...
Here is the link with the supported current workloads. MAUI still isn’t supported:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2022/mac-release-notes-preview#17.0.0-priv-pre.1
Can’t wait to try it. Any clue when the first public preview will go live?
Is MAUI supported with this version of Preview for mac as it is for Windows?
Would love to see the M1 version 🙂
It is running on my M1. So far so good.
Do you mean vs 2022 preview ? I believe this still Intel build not M1 build
Yes, 2022 is still running with an Intel build, and not native. When you said M1 version, I didn’t know you were talking about native.
It runs pretty fast overall, but yes, it will be nicer once they update it to Native. So far as I’ve been using it, I am starting to miss the Tasks window (for TODOs), as well as code lens. These are two features I realize I depend upon heavily.
This is great (especially the native UI part), but when will I be able to do native C++ development on it? Also, is Typescript development in the roadmap too? I would reeeeeeally like to use Visual Studio and go away from XCode, please.
@Jordan Mattiesen It sounds like some people have received download links, any idea when the rest of us might too? Im happy to test this as VSforMac is my primary IDE and anything to improve over the existing version is a bonus.