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
Code Faster and Better with GitHub Copilot’s New Features: Slash Commands and Context Variables
Have you ever wished you had an AI assistant that could help you write code faster and better? That’s what Visual Studio Copilot Chat offers you: an AI-powered pair programmer that can answer your questions, suggest code snippets, explain code logic, and chat with you about your project. You can use Copilot to code faster and better, as it helps you avoid errors and learn new skills. We have added two new features to the latest Visual Studio Copilot Chat extension: slash commands (/) that allow you to direct Copilot to perform specific tasks, and context Variables (#) that allow you to specify a file for Copil...
Elevate Your Git and GitHub Skills in Visual Studio with the Intermediate and Advanced Series
Git and Version Control skills are essential for development, but they’re often glossed over in coding curriculum and onboarding. We often memorize a few commands without understanding how to recover from sticky situations or leverage Git to the fullest. Are you ready to take your GitHub knowledge to the next level within Visual Studio? After the success of our introductory email learning series, we’re excited to announce our upcoming intermediate and advanced video series designed to enhance your Git and GitHub expertise. These videos are each less than 5 minutes long, and they are designed to help you get the m...
Visual Studio productivity features in 2023
Over the last year, we’ve invested heavily in new capabilities to help Visual Studio developers code more easily. Let’s look back on some of the additions that aim to make your coding experience more productive. Productivity highlights Here’s a snapshot of some productivity enhancements that shipped in 2023, ranging from versions 17.5 to 17.8. Unless stated otherwise, all these features are available in C# and C++. Spell Checker – 17.5 GA The Spell Checker makes sure your spelling is accurate while preserving the functionality of your code. For more information, see the blog post “Improving the Spell Chec...
Latest updates for C++ Remote Linux Development in Visual Studio: Remote File Explorer, Integrated Terminal, and more…
Visual Studio allows you to target your remote Linux machines so that you can still use Visual Studio’s build and debugging suite for all your remote workflows just like how you would develop locally without having to leave the IDE. To further enhance your ability to develop remotely for C++ from Visual Studio, we have added a new Remote File Explorer to perform file operations on your remote machine, an integrated SSH terminal to access your remote targets, and an automated experience to install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and build tools. Additionally, we have added support to run remote Linux tests from ...
17.9 Preview 3 brings exciting changes to Code Search
With the release of 17.9 Preview 3 dropping today, we are bringing some exciting enhancements to the Code Search (also known as All-In-One Search) experience. Since our last update with the search experience, we’ve been hard at work refining the experience and ideating ways to add to the experience. Now, you can search for any word or string of characters across your solution, supplementing file and symbol results from your codebase. You can now search for local variable names, words in comments, parameter names, or any other string of characters across your codebase. The added text support will help round out...
Code, Connect & Learn at Visual Studio LIVE! in Las Vegas.
As an integral part of our Visual Studio community, we're thrilled to extend a special invitation to Visual Studio LIVE!, from March 3-8, 2024, at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. This event is a hub for developers eager to explore the latest features in the IDE plus additional insights from experts in Visual Studio, Azure, and GitHub. Microsoft is not just sponsoring but actively participating in this dynamic conference. And for our blog readers, we have an sweet offer to make this experience even more rewarding. Keep reading to learn about an exclusive discount code for blog readers, available for a l...
2023 – a year of community experiments
As we enter a new year, we wanted to catch you up on several experiments your feedback and participation helped us fine tune over the course of 2023. A community experiment is when we identify features believed to increase user productivity and happiness, and then build and test it with the community of Visual Studio users. These are features that don’t have many upvotes on Developer Community, but other signals suggest that they would be desirable for developers regardless. We then publish the feature as an open-source extension and work with the community to get it Just Right™. This includes receiving bug re...
Visual Studio Performance Highlights Delivered in 2023
As we step into 2024, we're taking a moment to look back at the significant performance improvements our team delivered in 2023. Your valuable feedback, active collaboration, and unwavering support have been crucial in enhancing Visual Studio. This past year has been focused on optimizing performance, and we're thrilled to showcase the key advancements that have elevated your development experience. Join us as we recap the impactful enhancements that made Visual Studio faster, smoother, and more responsive in 2023.  17.5 Performance Enhancements 17.6 Performance Enhancements ...
Visual Studio 2013 Retirement: Support reminder for older versions of Visual Studio
It’s a New Year, and a good time for a reminder of upcoming dates in the Visual Studio support lifecycle. Support for Visual Studio 2013 will end on April 9 of this year. If you’re using an older version of Visual Studio, we want to keep you productive and secure when using Visual Studio, and strongly recommend you upgrade to Visual Studio 2022. Additionally, Visual Studio 2019 will transition from Mainstream to Extended Support on April 9, 2024. Further, if you’re using the Community Edition of Visual Studio 2017 or 2019, we recommend you upgrade to Visual Studio 2022 Community, our first 64-bit IDE which ...