Join us November 8 for the Launch of Visual Studio 2022

Amanda Silver

On behalf of our entire team, I’m excited to announce the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2022 on November 8, and the immediate availability of the Visual Studio 2022 Release Candidate (RC) and Preview 5. We invite you to explore the latest capabilities of Visual Studio 2022 at our virtual launch event on November 8. Throughout the day, you can learn from some special guest speakers, talk back to the Visual Studio team, and even download exclusive digital swag.

Banner for Visual Studio 2022 launch event

Join us at our virtual event

Our free, online launch event kicks off at 8:30 AM Pacific Time on November 8 with a keynote from Scott Hanselman, the Visual Studio product team, and myself (add to calendar). We’ve scheduled breakout sessions by technology area, so that you can learn about the most significant changes in your space. There are also a lot of Tips & Tricks talks focusing on all the new capabilities and how to get the most out of Visual Studio 2022. There’s also a live Q&A throughout, so you’ll be able to ask the team directly if you have questions. And that’s not all—our launch party will also have downloadable Visual Studio 2022 digital swag for you.

Download Visual Studio 2022 RC and Preview 5

By installing the RC release version of Visual Studio 2022, you can now prepare for the General Availability (GA) of Visual Studio 2022. The GA version of Visual Studio 2022 is fully supported by Microsoft. Both RC and GA versions come with a go-live license, for production use.

You should use the RC release if you wish to use Visual Studio to build production-ready apps and projects and receive less frequent feature updates. At launch, the RC version will update to GA version.

You should use the Preview 5 release if you wish to try out the latest features of Visual Studio 2022. At launch, the Preview 5 version will update to Visual Studio 2022 17.1 Preview 1 and will contain the latest features the team is working on.

If you have a license to the Enterprise or Professional edition and have been using that edition, you can simply update to Preview 5 or RC and sign in with your subscription user account. If you’re eligible to use Community edition (terms), then you can also update to Preview 5 or RC. If you don’t have a license or are not able to use Community edition, then there are trials available for you try out Visual Studio 2022.

Take part!

You can install both the RC and Preview 5 release side by side with Visual Studio 2019. We’re in the home stretch now, and we need your help making Visual Studio 2022 the best developer experience for you. We encourage you to download Visual Studio 2022 and use it just like you would use Visual Studio 2019. We appreciate your time providing feedback via Developer Communityreporting a problem, and taking part in surveys.

51 comments

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  • Davidson Sousa 0

    The download of VS 2022 RC Community is not working. It takes to an empty “thank you” page and nothing happens. Both Professional and Enterprise are working.

    • Andy SterlandMicrosoft employee 0

      Sorry you’ve encountered an issue downloading VS 2022 RC Community. We’re going to investigate the issue. In the mean time you can download VS2022 RC Community from: https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vs_community.exe

    • Moeskops,Richard R.J.J. 0

      For me the download worked after disabling the adblocker 🙁 and enabling all those stupid trackers.

  • Rand Random 0

    So, going from Preview 4 to RC means I have to remove Preview 4 and install RC, there is no update path to RC, am I correct?

    • Ben Kimball 0

      Not directly, but you can upgrade P4 to P5, then P5 will have an upgrade path to RC.

      • Rand Random 0

        I believe this statement is wrong, because as Andy Sterland again explains below, it seems like once preview always preview, since I am in the “Preview channel” and there seems no way to switch channels because they can be installed side by side.

      • Weihan Li 0

        It seemed there’s no update for the upgrade from P5 to RC

      • 8615977617981 0

        Thanks you

    • Andy SterlandMicrosoft employee 0

      The preview releases are a separate “channel” (the Preview channel). They will continue to update through the lifecycle of VS 2022. When VS 2022 GA launches the Preview versions will move to 17.1 Preview 1. The RC release is from a different channel (the Current channel) which will stay on 17.0 until 17.1 becomes generally available. Both RC and Preview 5 can be installed side by side and will update on their own cadence.

      There’s more info over in our release rhythm documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/productinfo/release-rhythm.

      • Rand Random 0

        I take this explanation as a “Yes” to my question, “there is NO update path from Preview 4 to RC” because they are in seperate channels.

        • Andy SterlandMicrosoft employee 0

          Yes. There is no path from Preview 4 to RC.

          But, no to the you need to remove Preview 4. You may need to do so to save disk space or for any number of reasons, but not because it is a requirement before you can install RC.

          • zak sherif 0

            There are benefits from the Preview installation that the packages installed will be shared with VS2019 and the 2022 RC. However, not having the option to upgrade from preview to RC seems unexpected.

    • Super Coco 0

      New Project Dialog and Start Page is not fixed, continues to be a chaos mess disaster.

  • kk 0

    waiting for days! will be there!

  • Chiramisu 0

    I’m excited about the next iteration of Visual Studio, but I’m baffled at how this can be released without at least a path to upgrade our “Visual Studio Installer Projects” to WiX or at least an updated version of VS Installer Projects (edit: I see now an update has been released, but I would still prefer to migrate to WiX). Personally, I prefer WiX, but I really hope for an integrated GUI based upgrade process within VS. Even if migration is unsupported, native support for WiX would be outstanding, especially for native Windows Desktop App developers, which always seem to be completely forgotten and neglected when it comes to packaging our software into an installer. Please address these concerns. Note the below feedback:

    Installer Projects vs WiX in VS 2022

  • David Roth 0

    Any updates on the state of the Winforms Designer for .NET 5/6? There is lots of silence around the roadmap/progress?
    There are still serious limitations/bugs which make the current version literally unusable for any existing large apps with custom controls or custom IExenderProvider components. The story is really bad when using it in combination with 3rd party controls like DevExpress. We want to migrate a huge Winforms/DevExpress App to .NET6, but the state of the Winforms Designer makes this step impossible for now 🙁

    • Steven Bone 0

      I second this. The Winforms editor has seen no updates for quite some time, and HUGE gaps (and new bugs) exist between old editor and new editor, not to mention full framework and core. There is no public roadmap, nor a public compilation of the gaps that exist. There were some promises of documentation in ‘coming previews’ 10 months ago that never materialized. When you report an issue, even with full repro code and steps it is not ‘good enough’ until you provide an animated gif of the steps – only THEN will it go into investigation status but then us stays there forever. Honestly, it is such a fight to report an easily reproducible bug that I hate even trying. Some examples: DesignerAttribute Ignored Abstract base class now unsupported, Designer load error after build

      • Hughes, Danial 0

        I have asked about this multiple times, both here and on the .net blog and each time there is no response from anyone at MS. In our organization we use WPF exclusively, and have a huge legacy WPF code base. Frankly MS attitude towards us and anyone else using THEIR SOFTWARE has been terrible. Like many we would very much like to migrate our code to .NET 6 and reap the many benefits that would bring.

    • Mike-E 0

      +1 for my only major outstanding issue, which has been “Under Consideration” for months now with no movement, despite solid analysis of where the problem exists:

      https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/ServiceHubRoslynCodeAnalysisServiceex/1482376

      Opening 50+ files twice in Visual Studio puts the `ServiceHub.RoslynCodeAnalysisService.exe` into a funky state whereby its CPU utilization is magnified for many more seconds at a time. This is a fortunately easy way of triggering the condition. I have encountered this simply by having a lot of files opening with regular editing, and it is most unpleasant, especially when coupled with other latent CPU-intensive conditions currently lurking about in VS, code generators, and Razor tooling (which have also been reported).

  • Aijaz Bin Qasim 0

    Oh that is great!
    Let me ask a question, Can I install it to develop my ongoing projects after your official releasing date ?

    • Andy SterlandMicrosoft employee 0

      After the GA release (11/8) you will not be able to install RC. The RC version will update to the GA version. But, that’s good! You want to be using the GA version – it will have the latest fixes!

      • Aijaz Bin Qasim 0

        Thanks

  • Mike-E 0

    I am here to chime in on Developer Community, which is an overall excellent resource and one that I quite enjoy.

    However. 🙂 Your diagnostics collections and recordings could be greatly improved. I have dozens of outstanding reports and most of them result in “Provide More Info” despite literally recording on my machine with an ETL/DMP file exactly what happens. A good example here:
    https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/visual-studio-has-encountered-an-unexpected-error-3/1542511

    It would seem that if I am literally recording and demonstrating exactly what happens on my machine, you would have everything required to diagnose this issue. Instead, I am now being asked for a video recording of the literal machine recording I literally recorded and sent to you?! Does not compute.

    It’s gotten to the point now that if something occurs (which despite all your great efforts occurs with great regularity), I am double-thinking whether I should report it or not, as it will simply land into the “Provide More Info” status bucket of churn. Exactly the feedback loop an effective feedback mechanism wishes to avoid.

    Thank you for any consideration.

  • Irina Pykhova 0

    can someone tell, as of today, is there any difference between RC and Preview (I mean in functionality, fixed/known issues)?

    • Andy SterlandMicrosoft employee 0

      Not at the moment. The differences are cosmetic/licensing/etc.. But, this is a once in a life time moment for the entire lifespan of Visual Studio 2022. Starting with the GA the Preview and release (‘current’) channel will never be the same again. The preview channel will contain new functionality that will make its way into the release (Current) channel – but by the time they do the Preview channel will have moved on.

      More info: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/productinfo/release-rhythm.

  • Tele Jagi 0

    Oh dear, I really really enjoyed preview 4.1 and now 5. so I need to install RC if I want to go stable from now on?

    • Andy SterlandMicrosoft employee 0

      You can stay on the preview channel. It will update to 17.1 on the 8th of November. It, does not supported in the same way that the GA release will be. We recommend the release (RC) version over preview if stability is your goal. Changes happen more frequently in preview.

      • Tele Jagi 0

        @Andy Sterland, Thank you! In fact I’ll do that right now~ Cheers.

  • vintom 0

    How can I run a .net 4.5-based application? I found that the components related to .net4.0 to 4.5 could no longer be installed on vs2022

    • David Childs 0

      Do you mean plugins and UI components? Otherwise, I have no problem creating/debugging 4.x Framework apps.

      • vintom 0

        I installed vs2022 rc, but I couldn’t run my 4.5 Framework app. I found a notice online saying that “Visual Studio 2022 and later cannot generate apps for .NET Framework 4.0 through .NET Framework 4.5.1. To continue building these apps, you can use Visual Studio 2019 or earlier. Developer kits can be installed for specific versions of the .NET Framework, if any, on all supported platforms “

  • Thomas Ardal 0

    Any updates on when and if extensions on the marketplace will allow both VS19 and VS22 builds before the release?

  • Yury Komar 0

    So many updates, also 2022 version is coming but the problem with transparenscy of popup tips in code editor when VS running on localization different from English still exists.
    MS inform that it has beed fixed in on of vs2019 but the problem stil moved to vs2022…

    I am using Russian Lang in VS and facing the problem with the popup tips of code editor. On the English it is not repeated.

  • Younis Zebari 0

    Thank u so much Amanda and VS team💕

  • zezu420 zezu420 0

    Joy, more half finished / half baked features full of bugs !

  • Zaoshi Kaba 0

    This is quite disappointing to hear. I try to use VS2022 daily and have to restart it 5+ times per day because of build freezes and IntelliSense problems. Deleting .vs folder also became a routine because that’s the only thing that fixes IntelliSense.

  • christian brandoni 0

    Guys the AI autocompletion is terrific! It’s guessing right 90% of the time, basically I am spending more time pressing TAB then writing the code lol
    Best feature ever.

  • Marcus Runge 0

    If I install Visual Studio 2022 RC, a lot of stuff (filenames, shortcuts) carries the suffix “RC”. Is this gonna disappear without reinstalling once GA is available? Does the update automatically changes, for example Visual Studio 2022 RC to Visual Studio 2022?

  • Oliver Schneider 0

    When using one of those aka.ms short URLs for the installers, which version do I get? The GA channel or Preview?

    Also, when I want to create my offline installation, will anything change with this version of VS?

  • Olsen, Harold 0

    When will there be Azure vm images with VS 2022?

    • Jason Jardina 0

      This is an excellent question. I have several pipelines in Azure DevOps and I want to know when the hosted build images will have support for vs 2022

  • Byron Adams 0

    I want to completely remove vs2019 because it’s on a small SSD and only use vs2022. What is the best way? Will the Uninstall under the More button in Visual Studio Install remove ALL checked items?

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