Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
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Agent mode is now generally available with MCP support
Copilot agent mode is the next evolution in AI-assisted development—and it's now generally available in the Visual Studio June update. Agent mode turns GitHu...
Latest posts
VisualStudio.Extensibility: Install extensions without restarting Visual Studio!
The new VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK helps you build extensions that run outside of the main IDE process for improved performance and reliability. With a focus on developer productivity, it features a modern, intuitive .NET Core-based API and solid, well-maintained documentation. This public preview release builds on our previous developer previews, and it brings with it the highly-requested ability to publish your new extensions in the Visual Studio Marketplace and share them with customers. We’ve introduced some great new features that will make it easier to configure your extensions, query the project sys...
Last Chance: Visual Studio LIVE! – Las Vegas
Less than 3 weeks to go! Join Us at Visual Studio LIVE! Las Vegas Are you at the forefront of driving business innovation using Visual Studio? With our room block running low, decide today to secure your spot at Visual Studio LIVE! Las Vegas. This event is your prime opportunity to enhance your skills and gain insights into new technologies, including intelligent apps and the integration of generative AI into your existing platforms. BONUS: Several Product Managers from Visual Studio, Azure Data, and GitHub will be attending and have set aside time for 1:1 customer meetings to meet you in person. Come to the ...
Introducing Visual Studio 17.10 – Preview 1 is Here!
We're excited to introduce the first preview of Visual Studio 17.10! This is where we get to show you what we've been working on and what we’re planning, and with feedback from the most active developer community on the planet, we get to deliver truly compelling products. During this release you’ll get to check out our latest enhancements and features designed to meet your productivity and game development needs. We’re especially eager to share the most recent updates to the GitHub Copilot Chat extension for Visual Studio. The preview is a great opportunity to dive into the exciting features we are building,...
Visual Studio 2022 17.9 Now Available
Welcome to Visual Studio 2022 17.9! This release comes with more capabilities and improvements that enhance productivity for you and your team, such as AI-assistance and better extensibility. Plus, we're always improving core productivity and performance! We’ve included suggestions from you in the community and are publishing more about our backlogs in our release notes and roadmap. From AI-powered Git commit messages and enhanced C++ game development tools to .NET/C# advancements and responsive project management capabilities, this release caters to a wide array of you and your team's development needs. Di...
A Look Back: Visual Studio’s Profiling Tool Advancements in 2023
In retrospect, the past year our team was on a mission to enhance Profiling tools, making them more efficient and user-friendly. We improved instrumentation and our .NET counter tool, broadened platform support, seamlessly integrated unit test profiling, and boosted overall performance. Your valuable feedback via Developer Community was crucial in making Visual Studio's profiling experience noticeably more intuitive. In this post, you will get a summary of the 2023 changes providing an opportunity to catch up on any enhancements you may have overlooked. All features listed below are available in our latest Vi...
2023’s Top 10 New Features for .NET in Visual Studio
The .NET team has been working hard all through 2023 to create innovative features to enhance the productivity and experience of .NET developers. This blog dives into James Montemagno's favorite new .NET features in Visual Studio. I was particularly interested in Dev Tunnels. One of the standout features introduced in Visual Studio during 2023. This feature has been a game-changer for developers seeking to expose their local development servers to the internet. It provides a unique URL that directly tunnels to your local machine, making it incredibly valuable for scenarios like mobile development where testin...
Developing With Accessibility in Mind at Microsoft  
December 3rd was celebrated as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, or IDPWD, to bring awareness and understanding of the issues that people with disabilities face around the world. At Microsoft, we are committed to empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and that includes empowering developers to create accessible and inclusive products. Building with accessibility in mind helps provide all users, including users with disabilities, better access to technology. Visual Studio includes several accessibility features that create a delightful experience for all ...
In the Debugger’s Spotlight: A Year in Review
Reflecting on the past year's journey, our team was on a mission to enhance debugging tools, ensuring they became more efficient and user-friendly. We dedicated our efforts to boosting inner-loop productivity, making external source debugging more seamless, improving overall performance, and optimizing memory analysis. And, of course, we were eagerly listening to the valuable feedback from you, our fantastic Developer Community! Based on the invaluable feedback we received from our customers like you, it's clear that the outcome is a noticeably smoother and more intuitive debugging experience in Visual Studio....
A Year of C++ Improvements in Visual Studio
As we enter the new year, it’s a good time to look back at all the features and improvements we made for C++ developers in Visual Studio in 2023. We’ve made advancements across the IDE, toolchain, and the vcpkg package manager in both performance and functionality. Some focus areas have been ARM64 support, Unreal Engine development, code safety, and cross-platform development. Let us know what you think of these features below, send us your feedback! Contents Visual Studio IDE Cross-Platform Cross-platform development is a first-class citizen in Visual Studio and has been for many years now. We’ve a...