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...
Latest posts
Visual Studio May Update – Plan, Review, Refine
There's a particular rhythm to good development work: you think, you try, you check, you adjust. This month's Visual Studio update leans into that rhythm. Whether you're sketching an approach with the Plan agent before touching a single file, reviewing a wave of changes across many files, or fine-tuning the context Copilot has to work with, the May release adds deliberate, observable steps between an idea and a finished change. Alongside that, we shipped a fresh release of MSVC Build Tools with a long list of C++ improvements, because foundations matter too. Download the Visual Studio 2026 Stable Channel to tr...
Plan Before You Build: Introducing the Plan agent in Visual Studio
You ask Copilot to tackle something big, it gets to work, and a dozen file changes later you realize you had a completely different approach in mind. The code isn't wrong... it just isn't what you were going for. Last year, we introduced planning as a feature in Agent mode to help with exactly this. Since then, you’ve told us you wanted more control over when planning happens, the ability to edit plans directly, and a way to save and share them. Your feedback shaped what came next: the new Plan agent. Instead of jumping straight into implementation, the Plan agent starts with a deeper understanding of what ...
VSLive! Microsoft AI Hackathon 2026: Send Your Team Home With Working Code
If you lead a development team, you already know the pattern. You approve the travel, your developers attend a great conference, they come back energized, and then the work resumes exactly as it was. The ideas don't survive contact with the backlog. This July at VSLive! @ Microsoft HQ in Redmond, we're trying to change that pattern. We're adding the VSLive! Microsoft AI Hackathon 2026, a focused, hands-on build event that runs alongside the conference. Your developers learn during the day, then build at night, on the Microsoft campus, with Microsoft engineers and MVPs in the room. They leave with workin...
Agent Skills in Visual Studio: Teach Copilot How Your Team Works
Visual Studio now supports Agent Skills, which are reusable instruction sets that teach Copilot agents how to handle specific tasks like running a build pipeline, generating boilerplate, or following your team's coding standards. Define a skill once, and the agent applies it automatically whenever it's relevant. Creating a skill You can create a skill directly from within Visual Studio. Click the tools icon in the bottom-right corner of Copilot Chat to open the skills panel, a dedicated view of every discovered skill. Click the + button in the top-right corner of the panel and follow the guided flow: choose...
TypeScript 7 Beta Now Enabled by Default in Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3
TypeScript 7 Beta Now Enabled by Default in Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 In Visual Studio 2026 18.6 Insiders 3 we have updated the built-in TypeScript SDK to TypeScript 7 Beta (native preview). The TypeScript SDK provides the compiler and language service used for TypeScript and JavaScript support in Visual Studio. This update impacts any project that uses the built-in SDK, including TypeScript projects, ASP.NET Core projects with npm packages, and any TypeScript or JavaScript files you are editing. If your project doesn't have a specific TypeScript version installed, Visual Studio will use the new nativ...
SDK-Style Support for Extension Projects
Starting in Visual Studio 18.5, you can create and build Visual Studio extensions (VSIX) using an officially supported SDK-style project. This brings VSIX projects into the modern build and deployment pipeline, improving incremental build performance and making the build → deploy → debug workflow more reliable. Install the Visual Studio extension development workload to get the templates and tooling and try it out for yourself! Note: Extensions written using the modern VisualStudio.Extensibility framework already supports SDK-style projects today. This update extends the same SDK-style experience to VSSDK-base...
Visual Studio April Update – Cloud Agent Integration
GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio is becoming more agentic with every release. This update brings cloud agent integration front and center, letting you start remote coding sessions without leaving the IDE.
From AI to .NET: 20 VS Live! Las Vegas Sessions You Can Watch Now
In March 2026, developers came together at VS Live! Las Vegas for a full week of technical learning, hands-on exploration, and a lot of great conversations about where software development is headed next. From AI-assisted development to modern .NET, cloud-native apps, and developer productivity, one thing was clear: the pace of change is not slowing down. If you were not able to attend, or if you want to revisit some of the strongest content from the event, we are now publishing 20 sessions from VS Live! Las Vegas on the Visual Studio YouTube channel. We are releasing about two sessions per day, so you can watc...
Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required
Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required Azure MCP tools are now built into Visual Studio 2022 as part of the Azure development workload — no separate extension to find, install, or update. You can enable over 230 tools across 45 Azure services directly in GitHub Copilot Chat and manage Azure resources, deployments, and diagnostics without leaving your IDE. If you already have the Azure development workload installed, you're one click away from getting started. What changed Previously, using Azure MCP tools in Visual Studio 2022 required you to install the "GitHub Copilo...
Stop Hunting Bugs: Meet the New Visual Studio Debugger Agent Workflow
We’ve all been there: a bug report lands in your inbox with a title like "App crashes sometimes" and zero reproduction steps. Your morning, which was supposed to be spent building new features, is now a forensic investigation. You’re setting scattershot breakpoints, staring at the call stack, and trying to guess what the original reporter was thinking. Debugging isn't just about fixing code; it’s about reducing uncertainty. Today, we’re taking a massive leap toward solving that problem by introducing a new, upgraded, guided workflow within our existing Debugger Agent in Visual Studio. Ending the "Guessi...
Take full control of your floating windows in Visual Studio
Make Visual Studio floating windows work perfectly with PowerToys FancyZones. Flip one option to get independent windows, better snapping, and less friction.
Bookmark Studio: evolving bookmarks in Visual Studio
Bookmarks in Visual Studio have always been a simple, reliable feature. Many developers use them regularly, and over the years we’ve heard consistent feedback from those users. Bookmarks were useful, but there were a few core gaps that kept them from being as effective and relevant as they could be. Navigation was one of the biggest pain points. You could move between bookmarks, but there was no easy way to jump directly to a specific bookmark using the keyboard. That made bookmarks harder to rely on once you had more than a few. Another common request was sharing. Bookmarks worked well for personal, local nav...
Visual Studio March Update – Build Your Own Custom Agents
This month's Visual Studio update gives you new ways to customize GitHub Copilot. Custom agents allow you to build specialized Copilot agents tailored to your team's workflow, backed by the tools and knowledge sources that matter to your project. Alongside that, agent skills bring reusable instruction sets, and a new find_symbol tool gives agents language-aware navigation across your codebase. Beyond agents, we're continuing to invest in the diagnostics experience with Copilot-powered profiling directly from Test Explorer and real-time perf tips during debugging. Security gets a boost too, with Copilot now hel...
Unlock More Power in Your Development Workflow: Syncfusion for Visual Studio Subscribers
A few months ago, I was talking with a developer who said something that stuck with me: “I love building apps. I just don’t love rebuilding the same UI controls over and over again.” That’s the reality for a lot of teams. You want to focus on your business logic, your architecture, your differentiation. Instead, you burn cycles wiring up grids, charts, document exports, dashboards, and signing workflows. If you’re a Visual Studio subscriber, there’s a benefit waiting for you that can change that: Syncfusion. And it’s included at no additional cost for eligible subscribers. Let me walk you thro...
Get the Inside Scoop on Visual Studio Subscriptions, Straight to Your Inbox
Get the Inside Scoop on Visual Studio Subscriptions, Straight to Your Inbox A few weeks ago I was talking with a Visual Studio Enterprise subscriber. Seasoned .NET developer. Ships production code. Knows his stack inside and out. During the conversation I mentioned one of the training benefits included in his subscription. He stopped me. “I didn’t even know that was included.” That is exactly why we created the Visual Studio Subscriptions monthly email newsletter. Why We Launched It Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise subscriptions include far more than just the IDE. For exam...
Visual Studio Dev Essentials: Free, Practical Tools for Every Developer
When I first found Visual Studio Dev Essentials, it felt like discovering a hidden door in the developer toolkit world. I’d heard about free tools and cloud credits, but I wasn’t sure if it would really matter in day-to-day coding life. The short answer: it absolutely does. What struck me most was how the program was built with real developers in mind, and the fact that it’s completely free makes it accessible to anyone with a Microsoft account. Why Dev Essentials Matters Dev Essentials is not a trial version or a limited sneak-peek. It’s a free developer membership that brings together the tools, clou...
Visual Studio February Update
This month’s Visual Studio update continues our focus on helping you move faster and stay in flow, with practical improvements across AI assistance, debugging, testing, and modernization. Building on the momentum from January’s editor updates, the February release brings smarter diagnostics and targeted support for real world development scenarios, from WinForms maintenance to C++ modernization. All of the features highlighted are available in the Visual Studio 2026 Stable Channel as part of the February 2026 feature update (18.3). Please update to the latest version to try out these new features! WinForms Ex...
Custom Agents in Visual Studio: Built in and Build-Your-Own agents
Agents in Visual Studio now go beyond a single general-purpose assistant. We're shipping a set of curated preset agents that tap into deep IDE capabilities; debugging, profiling, testing alongside a framework for building your own custom agents tailored to how your team works. Built in agents Each preset agent is designed around a specific developer workflow and integrates with Visual Studio's native tooling in ways that a generic assistant can't. Access them through the agent picker in the chat panel or using ‘@’ in chat. Bring your own: custom agents (preview) The presets cover workflow...