Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
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Visual Studio 2026 is here: faster, smarter, and a hit with early adopters
Dear developers, We’re thrilled to announce that Visual Studio 2026 is now generally available! This is a moment we’ve built side by side with you. Your feed...
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Survey for Web App developers or Cordova developers
When it comes to ensuring that code quality is high, methods and approaches vary by developer. The Visual Studio team would like to hear about the ways in which you ensure high code quality. Specifically, we are looking to developers building hybrid apps using Apache Cordova™ and/or developers building web apps, to provide feedback on their experiences through our anonymous survey. Your feedback will provide direct input to support changes in future versions of Visual Studio.This survey can take as little as 5 minutes to complete. When filling out the survey, please indicate if you would like to participate...
Survey on Xamarin usage with .NET or VC++
Cross platform mobile device development is important: With bring-your-own-device trends in the enterprise, and heterogeneity in the consumer mobile device market, developers are increasingly focused on building apps that can target a variety of devices. We are committed to enabling developers to build apps for this heterogeneous, mobile-first world with Visual Studio for the technology of your choice – whether .NET, C++ or JavaScript. To read more, check out this post by Soma Mobile-first, Cloud-first Development – Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 released, Visual Studio Apache Cordova Tooling preview and the ...
Visual Studio “14” CTP 3 Released
Today we released Visual Studio “14” CTP 3 and an early build of the .NET Framework vNext. Get it from the Microsoft Download Center or from MSDN subscriber downloads or save some setup time and use a ready-to-use VM in Azure. You’ll find a complete list of new features and fixes in the Visual Studio “14” release notes. Some highlights in this release include: Other Developer Releases Along with Visual Studio “14” CTP 3 I also want to call attention to some related released that we recently announced: We’re looking forward to your feedback on this CTP. Please p...
Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1 RC
Today we released the Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1 RC for download on CodePlex. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio that supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, editing, IntelliSense, interactive debugging, profiling, IPython REPL with inline graphics cross-platform/language debugging and running Python websites on Microsoft Azure with tooling integration for both publishing and debugging. PTVS 2.1 RC is now also available for Visual Studio Express 2013 for Desktop or Web (starting w...
Apache Cordova Tooling Update with Support for Windows 7
This week, we released CTP 2.0 of our Extension for Multi-Device Hybrid App Development which enables developers to build apps for iOS, Android, and Windows using Apache Cordova™. This preview release, the third in three months, delivers several big features requested by customers via UserVoice, Twitter, StackOverflow and email – including support for more operating systems and debugging Android devices less than version 4.4 (“KitKat”). Support for Windows 7 and 8. According to our data, nearly 15% of developers who attempt to install the Cordova extension are using Windows 7 or 8. Prior ...
Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 RTM Available
Today we released Update 3 for Visual Studio 2013 (you can read more on Brian Harry’s blog and Soma’s blog). To upgrade you can either download the update or install a full version of Visual Studio 2013 with Update 3 already installed from these links: In addition to new features, this update also offers reliability fixes and bug fixes, including: You can learn more about the full list of new Update 3 features in the release notes and bug fixes in the KB article. Other important releases I also want to highlight ...
Visual Studio Tools for Unity 1.9
Today we released the Visual Studio Tools for Unity add-on (formerly known as UnityVS). It is now available for download on the Visual Studio Gallery at the following links: VSTU is Microsoft’s free Visual Studio add-on that enables a rich programming and debugging experience for working with the Unity gaming tools and platform. This is our first release since the acquisition of SyntaxTree, and we’re excited to have the opportunity to reach to the Unity community with Visual Studio. Here are the highlights in today’s 1.9 release: And many more new features and bug fixe...
Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 1.0 Beta 2 Available
Today we released the Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 1.0 Beta 2 which is now available for download. NTVS is Microsoft’s free Visual Studio add-on that enables a rich experience for working with Node.js apps, giving developers the power of the Visual Studio code editor including support for IntelliSense, the Visual Studio debugger, and for running Node.js apps on Microsoft Azure Web Sites or Cloud Services. Here are the highlights in today’s release: We’ve also fixed numerous bugs. See our full release notes for all the details and please send us your feedback through our forum...
Visual Studio “14” CTP 2 Available
Today we released CTP 2 of Visual Studio “14,” which is the codename for the next version of Visual Studio. To get started, you can download the bits (also available on MSDN subscriber downloads), or use the VM in Azure we’re making available (see the note below). In addition to the new features we added in CTP 1, this CTP also includes: You can find a complete list of new features in the Visual Studio “14” CTP knowledge base article. Note: We intend this preview to be used for testing and feedback purposes. It’s not meant for production environments. Please install the CTP on a test e...