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
How AI fixed my procrastination
I struggled to get started. For ages, I kept putting off building this website, creating a new programming language for Visual Studio, and coming up with fresh color themes. Each project looked overwhelming, and I couldn’t find the time or motivation to jump in. It all just felt like too much at once. But when a national holiday gave me a long weekend, I grabbed the chance to try out Copilot in Visual Studio and see how far I could get. To my surprise, I knocked out all three projects way faster and more easily than I expected. I’m sharing what I learned because I hope it inspires you to finally tackle those p...
Debugging, but Without the Drama (A Visual Studio 2026 Story)
It starts the way these things always start. A red build. A failing test. And that quiet, sinking feeling of “This worked yesterday.” Meet Sam. Sam’s not a junior, not a rockstar, just a solid developer who’s shipped enough code to know that bugs don’t care how confident you feel on Monday morning. That test failure does not offer much help at all. There are no clear steps to reproduce the issue. The exception message seems familiar in a vague way. But it does not prove useful right then. Out of habit Sam hits F5. He notices something small yet pretty important about it. The debugger launches fa...
Behind the scenes of the Visual Studio feedback system
Here on the Visual Studio team, our top priority is making your coding experience smoother and more enjoyable. And that begins with truly listening to your feedback. We understand that sometimes sharing your thoughts can feel like tossing bug reports and suggestions into a black hole. It doesn’t feel good, and we get it. But here’s the good news: over the past year, we’ve resolved more bugs reported by users and delivered more requested features than at any other time in Visual Studio’s history. We believe in being open about what happens to your feedback, so in this post, we’ll pull back the curtain and show ...
Streamlining your Git workflow with Visual Studio 2026
You’re a .NET developer with a busy morning, and an Azure DevOps ticket drops: “Login endpoint 500s under load.” You’ve got to fix it, review a teammate’s feature branch, and keep your repo clean - all before lunch. Visual Studio’s Git tools turn this everyday Git workflow of creating topic branches, stashing changes, committing, and handling PRs into a smooth, fast process. Let’s walk through your morning, showing how Visual Studio keeps Git friction out of your way. 9:00 AM: Spin up a topic branch for your bug fix Your repo’s open in VS (View → Git Repository), and you’re on main, fresh from last night’s C...
Unlocking the Power of Web with Copilot Chat’s New URL Context
There are many scenarios where Copilot Chat can feel limited by the built-in model training data. Maybe you want guidance on the latest web framework, documentation, or project-specific resources—but Copilot’s responses just aren’t specific enough. For developers who rely on up-to-date or esoteric answers, this gap can be a real frustration. URL Context: Bringing the web into Copilot Chat With the new URL context feature, Copilot Chat can now access and use information directly from web pages you specify. By pasting a URL into your Copilot Chat prompt, you empower Copilot to pull real-time, relevant infor...
Visual Studio November Update – Visual Studio 2026, Cloud Agent Preview, and more
Visual Studio 2026 is here! If you haven’t heard the news yet, we’re excited to share with you that Visual Studio 2026 is now generally available! This new version can better assist you with several performance improvements, a redesigned user experience, and a major leap in AI-driven development. Read more about it here and get started with VS 2026 today! Below updates are all available in Visual Studio 2026 only. GitHub Cloud Agent Preview is now available in Visual Studio The Cloud Agent is now in preview and ready to help you offload repetitive or time-consuming work. Enable it via the Copilot badge d...
Why changing keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio isn’t as simple as it seems
A straight look at what’s behind the keys We’ve all tried unlearning a keyboard shortcut - it feels like forgetting how to breathe. Muscle memory doesn’t mess around. We wrestle with this every time someone suggest a “quick” shortcut change. It’s not just editing a keybinding but navigating a history that makes Visual Studio so customizable for developers like us. Picture yourself deep in code, chugging coffee, ready to close a tab. You hit Ctrl+W because Chrome, VS Code, and every other tool uses it. But in Visual Studio? You likely need Ctrl+F4, a combo straight out of the Windows 98 era. Or maybe you try c...
Profiler Agent – Delegate the analysis, not the performance
In Visual Studio 2026 we introduced Copilot Profiler Agent, a new AI-powered assistant that helps you analyze and optimize performance bottlenecks in your code. By combining the power of GitHub Copilot with Visual Studio's performance profiler, you can now ask natural language questions about performance, get insights into hot paths, and quickly identify optimization opportunities. Let's walk through a real-world example of how this tool can help you make meaningful performance improvements. Benchmarking a real project To demonstrate the capabilities of the Copilot Profiler Agent, let's optimize CsvHelper, a p...
Upgrade MSVC, improve C++ build performance, and refactor C++ code with GitHub Copilot
Visual Studio 2026 introduces new GitHub Copilot capabilities to support C++ developers in three development tasks: These experiences are available now as a Private Preview in Visual Studio 2026. Install Visual Studio 2026 and join the waitlist for Private Preview today. C++ code editing tools for GitHub Copilot C++ code editing tools for GitHub Copilot bring the precision of C++ IntelliSense to Visual Studio agent mode to enable faster and more accurate codebase-wide edits. This includes: See Perform wide-sweeping refactors using C++ code editin...
Visual Studio – Built for the Speed of Modern Development
Visual Studio will adopt the Modern Support Lifecycle as a continuously updated IDE designed to deliver innovation as soon as it is ready, while maintaining the reliability and stability you count on every day with control over your build tools choices.
Spend Less Time Upgrading, More Time Coding in Visual Studio 2026
In the past, moving to the next major version of Visual Studio could take hours, sometimes days, to recreate your dev environment the way you like it. Visual Studio 2026 makes it easier than ever to stay current with the latest productivity features, performance improvements, and security fixes all without disrupting your flow. With the new Visual Studio install experience, you can effortlessly recreate your previous Visual Studio 2022 environment. Your workloads, SDKs, toolsets, extensions and settings are automatically copied and configured, so everything you need to build and continue developing your project i...
Azure MCP Server Now Built-In with Visual Studio 2026: A New Era for Agentic Workflows
Managing cloud resources often means juggling multiple tools, writing custom scripts, and switching contexts between your IDE and cloud management portals. These extra steps slow development and make it harder to build intelligent, secure applications efficiently. We’re excited to announce that Azure MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) tools are now generally available out-of-the-box in Visual Studio 2026, bringing agentic cloud automation directly into your trusted IDE. This integration empowers developers to build intelligent, secure applications faster, with less complexity and more confidence. Why It ...
A first look at the all‑new UX in Visual Studio 2026
Visual Studio 2026 introduces a refreshed user experience, thoughtfully crafted for clarity, accessibility, and a clean interface that feels right at home on Windows. This update is the result of extensive collaboration with developers and incorporates valuable feedback from the community. We’ve improved typography, iconography, and the overall layout to minimize distractions and keep your code front and center. Each update is designed to support modern workflows, making Visual Studio a more intuitive, consistent, and personal experience. Download the Insiders release and try our new visual improvements, AI in...
Introducing Copilot auto model selection (preview)
Faster responses, a lower chance of rate limiting, and 10% off premium requests for paid users - auto picks the best available model for each request based on current capacity and performance. With auto, you don't need to choose a specific model. Copilot automatically selects the best one for your task. Auto model selection in Chat is rolling out in preview to all GitHub Copilot users. How auto model selection works Auto selects the best model to ensure that you get the optimal performance and reduce the likelihood of rate limits. Auto will choose between GPT-5, GPT-5 mini, GPT-4.1, Sonnet 4.5, and Haiku 4.5 an...
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 feedback has helped shape this release more than any before. Since the introduction of the Insiders Channel in September, more developers have downloaded and tested this preview than any other in Visual Studio’s history. In the year leading up to this release, we fixed over 5,000 of your reported bugs and implemented 300 feature requests. That’s the most we’ve ever done, and we’re just getting started! With several performance improvements, a redesigned ...
Roadmap for AI in Visual Studio (November)
Today, we’re excited to share our public roadmap, which outlines the next steps in evolving Visual Studio with AI-powered agentic experiences. With every month, we aim to deliver smarter, faster, and more intuitive tools that enhance your coding experience. Disclaimer: The items outlined here represent ongoing work for the month. They are not commitments or guarantees for delivery within the current month. Upvote the features you or your organization care about most, so we know what to prioritize. With that said, here is what we are working on! New Agents We’re streamlining how you find and switch between mo...
Join us at .NET Conf: Dive into the future of development with Visual Studio 2026
We're thrilled to invite you to one of the most exciting events in the .NET ecosystem: .NET Conf. It runs from November 11th through the 13th and you’re invited! This annual virtual conference is a must-attend for developers, architects, and enthusiasts looking to level up their skills and stay ahead of the curve in .NET and Visual Studio development. What to expect at .NET Conf .NET Conf brings together experts from Microsoft and the broader community to share insights, best practices, and the latest innovations. Whether you're building web apps, mobile solutions, cloud services, or anything in between,...
Visual Studio October Update – new models, memories, planning, and more
The October 2025 update for Visual Studio 2022 (v17.14) is now available. In this month, we are bringing you improvements to model choices and agentic flows. New Models We now have Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Haiku 4.5 available in the chat window. This means the latest innovations for driving your agentic workflows is right at your fingertips. Memories For Copilot to work effectively for your unique team and repository, it needs to learn about your project and team best practices. Copilot memories enable Copilot to understand and apply your project's specific coding standards, making it project...
Introducing Planning in Visual Studio (Public Preview)
Quick prompts are great for small fixes, but they fall short on big projects. You end up rewriting instructions, tweaking them constantly, and hoping the model stays on track. It gives Copilot a visible, structured path to follow, one that updates as it works and keeps you in control at every step. In Agent Mode, Copilot can now create plans that research your codebase, break down big tasks, and run them step by step while iterating along the way. The result is a more predictable and transparent workflow that helps you understand exactly what it’s doing. How It Works Planning uses transparent tool ca...
Modernizing Visual Studio Extension Compatibility: Effortless Migration for Extension Developers and Users
We have great news for extension users and developers: Visual Studio 2026 is introducing an extension compatibility model designed specifically to make your life easier. Our top priority is to ensure that your extensions continue to work seamlessly across Visual Studio releases - with no extra effort required from you. For users: extensions that work in Visual Studio 2022 will just automatically work in Visual Studio 2026. And when upgrading to Visual Studio 2026 the Installer will install most extensions you’re using in Visual Studio 2022. For extension developers, gone are the days of needing to update versi...
Visual Studio Dev/Test Benefit Explained
Before joining Microsoft, I served as VP of Application Development at one of the largest temporary staffing companies in the United States. I’ll never forget the look on our CFO’s face when I told him we needed two to three additional cloud environments to support a large-scale modernization project. His expression went from curious to cautious as he started calculating what that might mean for compute, storage, and database costs. “You want three more cloud environments? Do you have any idea what that’s going to cost us each month?” He wasn’t wrong to ask. Expanding our cloud footprint could easily double our...
Roadmap for AI in Visual Studio (October)
Today, we’re excited to share our public roadmap, which outlines the next steps in evolving Visual Studio with AI-powered agentic experiences. With every month, we aim to deliver smarter, faster, and more intuitive tools that enhance your coding experience. Disclaimer: The items outlined here represent ongoing work for the month. They are not commitments or guarantees for delivery within the current month. Upvote the features you or your organization care about most, so we know what to prioritize. With that said, here is what we are working on! Remote agents We are starting to bring remote agents like the Gi...
VS Live! Orlando – Your Ultimate Learning Adventure
Imagine swapping stories with fellow developers over dinner as the Florida sun sets, then beginning the next morning with a stroll past the resort’s palm-lined walkways before catching your first session across 41 dynamic tracks. From there, immerse yourself in a full day of learning and connection. That’s the magic of Visual Studio Live! at Live 360 Tech Con, November 16–21, 2025, at Universal Orlando’s Royal Pacific Resort. Content-Rich Days, Networking Nights From breakfast to late afternoon, Live! 360 delivers back-to-back sessions, workshops, and labs led by Microsoft product managers and industry ex...
The $150 Secret Hiding in Plain Sight
Picture this: I’m standing in front of 400+ developers at Visual Studio Live! Redmond, right here on the Microsoft campus in Building 33, about to reveal what I call the hidden value of a Visual Studio subscription. I pull up a simple question on the screen: About half the hands go up in the packed Kodiak Auditorium. Good start. "Now, how many have actually logged in and activated your benefits?" The room goes quiet. Maybe 160 hands remain raised. "And how many are using your monthly Azure credits?" I watch as the forest of hands dwindles to just a couple dozen brave souls. The math is staggeri...
Visual Studio September Update – profiler agent, app modernization, and more
The September 2025 update for Visual Studio 2022 (v17.14) is now available. In this month, we are bringing you a fully integrated and game-changing agentic AI experience, from code generation to modernization, profiling, and code reviews. Profiler Agent We’ve heard the feedback loud and clear developers love the Profiler Agent. So, we’re bringing it to Visual Studio 2022 as well. It’s an AI-powered assistant built into Visual Studio that helps you find and fix performance issues without needing to be a profiling expert. The Profiler Agent works with GitHub Copilot to: ...
Enhancements to XAML Live Preview in Visual Studio for .NET MAUI
The XAML Live Preview feature in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14 introduces a significant usability improvement for .NET MAUI projects: the XAML Live Preview window is now available during design time, eliminating the requirement to initiate a debug session. This change streamlines the UI development workflow for .NET MAUI applications. Design-Time Availability Previously, XAML Live Preview was only accessible while debugging. With this release, you can open the XAML Live Preview window directly during design time. This allows you to see changes in your app UI in real-time. You can also use Hot Reload and othe...
Getting the most out of MCP in Visual Studio with Prompts, Resources, and Sampling
We're excited to announce that Visual Studio now supports MCP prompts, resources, and sampling (with even more coming soon!) to enhance your Copilot experience by bringing in more context from your engineering stack. These powerful new features unlock deeper integrations with your favorite tools and services, making your development workflow more intelligent and context aware. Let’s dive into each of these features and discuss some examples with specific MCP servers that can truly level up your AI-coding experience. MCP Resources and Resource Templates: Access External Data Seamlessly Model Context Proto...
Democratizing Performance: The Copilot Profiler Agent in Action on Real Code
We’re excited to announce the Copilot Profiler Agent available in Visual Studio 2026 Insiders, it's an AI-powered performance assistant built directly into Visual Studio. Forget staring at endless call trees or walls of mysterious numbers that leave you asking, “where do I even start?” The Copilot Profiler Agent changes that. Instead of raw data, you now get an AI partner that not only points out the real bottlenecks but also explains what’s going on, suggests fixes, writes benchmarks, and even validates improvements all in a smooth, guided loop. It’s like having a performance engineer sitting next to you....
Visual Studio 2026 Insiders is here!
Visual Studio 2026 Insiders is here - and it marks one of the most ambitious steps forward we’ve taken with the IDE. This release brings AI woven directly into the developer workflow, performance improvements that reset expectations for speed at enterprise scale, and a modern design that makes the environment feel lighter and more focused. And for the first time, we’re introducing the new Insiders Channel, which replaces the long-standing Preview Channel as the way developers can get early access to upcoming features. This is a release you can feel the moment you start using it - download the Insider...
Make Sense of Your Output Window with Copilot
Ever found yourself staring at the Output Window, overwhelmed by endless lines of logs and cryptic messages? You're not alone! For years, developers have relied on the Output Window for critical build and debug information. But making sense of it—and translating it into action—has been a challenge. What if you could instantly ask questions about your logs and take action without leaving your workflow? Now you can, thanks to Copilot’s new Output Window context! Say hello to smarter output window assistance In Visual Studio 17.14, Copilot can now read your Output Window, making it possible to interact with you...
Boost Your Copilot Collaboration with Reusable Prompt Files
Writing effective prompts for AI tools can be time-consuming and challenging. Cement those efforts by leveraging reusable prompt files. These custom prompts allow for quick access at the prompt box, and they’re automatically stored and shared with your teammates to make it easy to multiply your Copilot successes. Reusable prompt files solve the prompt-writing challenge Reusable prompt files let you write, save, and run prompts right inside Visual Studio. Simply craft your prompt in a .github/prompts/[title].prompt.md file, save it, and reference it whenever you need to engage Copilot. This means your bes...
Roadmap for AI in Visual Studio (September)
Today, we’re excited to share our public roadmap, which outlines the next steps in evolving Visual Studio with AI-powered agentic experiences. With every month, we aim to deliver smarter, faster, and more intuitive tools that enhance your coding experience. Disclaimer: The items outlined here represent ongoing work for the month. They are not commitments or guarantees for delivery within the current month. With that said, here is what we are working on! New Modes for Debugging and Profiling: We’re streamlining how you find and switch between modes and making sure both built-in and extension-provided mode...
The Visual Studio August Update is here – smarter AI, better debugging, and more control
The August 2025 update for Visual Studio 2022 (v17.14) is now available, and it’s all about helping developers stay focused, productive, and in control. Whether you're building games, tuning performance, or exploring AI, this release brings meaningful improvements that make everyday development smoother and smarter. GPT-5 support now available We're excited to announce that GPT-5 is now available in Visual Studio, bringing the latest advancements in AI directly to your development environment. With GPT-5 integration, you can leverage more powerful, accurate, and context-aware code suggestions and chat exper...
GitHub Copilot for Azure (Preview) Launches in Visual Studio 2022 with Azure MCP Support
The GitHub Copilot for Azure extension is now in Public Preview for Visual Studio 2022 (17.14+). It brings a curated set of Azure developer tools—exposed through the Azure MCP server—directly into GitHub Copilot Agent Mode in Visual Studio. The extension automatically installs and manages the Azure MCP server, so you can query resources, diagnose issues, deploy with azd, and run Azure CLI commands—all from the Copilot Chat. Ship Azure features without leaving Visual Studio. Agent-powered, MCP-enabled, no extra setup. What’s in the Public Preview? ...
Better Control over Your Copilot Code Suggestions
Copilot code completions and suggestions in the editor speed you up in your daily programming and coding activities, at every keystroke. They help you finish the line you're typing or anticipate your next edit, making your workflow smoother and faster. At the same time, editor is where you focus and put in the deep work. Based on your feedback, we understand how important it is to strike the right balance between helpful suggestions and maintaining control over your attention and workspace. We're excited to share features that give you enhanced control over your Copilot experience, so you can decide when sugge...
Bring Your Own Model to Chat in Visual Studio
We’re excited to announce that you can now bring your own language model into Visual Studio Chat. You can connect API keys from providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google) to access a wider range of models. This makes it easy to test the latest releases, customize workflows, or run on infrastructure you control. What it unlocks Getting started If you already have an API key from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, setup takes just a minute: A few important considerations: This is just the beginning. We’re expanding support for additional mo...
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is Now Generally Available in Visual Studio 🎉
We’re excited to announce that MCP support is now GA in Visual Studio—unlocking richer, real-time context from your entire development stack and expanding the power of Agent Mode like never before. Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that makes it easy for AI agents to connect with external tools and services—think of it like HTTP, but for AI-enabled developer workflows. Instead of building custom integrations for every tool, MCP lets you plug into robust server endpoints for databases, code search, deployment pipelines, and more, all through a consistent, secure protocol. With GA support in Vi...
Improving Codebase Awareness in Visual Studio Chat
Smarter Code Search in Visual Studio: From BM25 to Semantic Search In our latest 17.14.11 release, we’ve made a significant leap forward in how we explore your code to retrieve meaningful context. Our new Remote Semantic Search integration helps you find exactly what you need faster and with greater precision than ever before. By embedding Remote Semantic Search directly into the Visual Studio Copilot code search experience, we’ve combined the power of traditional keyword search (BM25) with the deep contextual understanding of cutting-edge AI models. This means your searches go beyond just matching words, t...
From Redmond to San Diego: VS Live! Highlights, Session Examples, and What’s Next
There’s something special about hosting developers at Microsoft HQ — and this year’s Visual Studio Live! Redmond reminded me why I love these events. The energy in every room was electric. From the moment the first session kicked off, developers leaned in, asked smart, challenging questions, and took every opportunity to connect with the Product Managers and engineers from Visual Studio, Azure, and GitHub Copilot. Between sessions, the hallways were buzzing. Right after the Experts Meet & Greet, one speaker shared a story that stuck with me: “A customer came up to me and said: All those paper cuts that Ma...
GPT-5 Now Available in Visual Studio
We’re excited to share that GPT-5, OpenAI’s latest frontier model, is now rolling out in GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio. GPT-5 offers faster responses and even better performance for writing and understanding code. This release brings a new level of capability to your development workflow, making it easier to move from idea to implementation. Try it now: Click the Copilot badge in your IDE, open Chat, and select GPT-5 (Preview). Why GPT-5 Matters to you GPT-5 is OpenAI’s most advanced model to date. It delivers substantial improvements in: From building end-to-end features to understand...
Visual Studio 2015 Retirement: Support reminder for older versions of Visual Studio
Support for Visual Studio 2015 will end on October 14, 2025. 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, which brings the power of Copilot to your development workflow. It also contains key productivity improvements in the editor, built-in support for Git version control and rich integration with GitHub, AI-powered code completions, and tools for .NET 8 and 9, and .NET MAUI. Support Timeframe Reminders for older versions If you’re still using an older version of Visual Studio, her...
Smarter AI Edits in Visual Studio Copilot
When we first set out to get smarter AI edits in Visual Studio Copilot, we knew we were tackling a deeply complex problem. It wasn’t just about generating great suggestions—it was about figuring out how to seamlessly apply those suggestions to your code. While the idea seemed simple at first glance, the reality was anything but. The Complexity of Implementing AI-Generated Edits Let’s rewind to our early attempts. Copilot might give you a fantastic suggestion—a new method, a helpful refactor, or maybe even a corrected logic block. But the real challenge began when we tried to insert those changes into th...
Watch Live: Visual Studio Toolbox at VS LIVE! Redmond 2025
Join Robert Green and Leslie Richardson for a full day of live sessions, demos, and interviews. Live from Microsoft HQ – Stream Tuesday’s Sessions with Visual Studio Toolbox! On Tuesday, August 5, join us for a special edition of Visual Studio Toolbox Live—broadcast from VS LIVE! Redmond and hosted by Leslie Richardson and Robert Green. You’ll get a full day of Microsoft-led sessions, live studio commentary, behind-the-scenes interviews, and exclusive insights straight from campus. 👉 Click here to set a YouTube reminder so you don’t miss a moment. 🎤 What You’ll See on Tuesday We’re streaming five sessions ...
Fresh Learning Paths Now Available on Pluralsight for VS Subscribers
We’ve been thrilled to see so many of you jump back into your Pluralsight benefit after our April 3rd announcement about extended access. Your enthusiasm for learning and leveling up with Visual Studio inspires us every day. If you haven’t had a chance to dive in yet—or want to explore what’s new since then—I wanted to share an update on some exciting new courses and paths that we think you’ll find especially valuable. More Time to Learn, More Ways to Grow Visual Studio developers on a paid Professional or Enterprise subscription unlock exclusive learning opportunities—Professional subscribers receive 6 months ...
Better Models, Smarter Defaults: Claude Sonnet 4, GPT-4.1, and More Control in Visual Studio
We’re excited to share some major improvements to the Copilot experience in Visual Studio, including smarter default models, more choices, and easier ways to manage your usage. Smarter default model Copilot in Visual Studio now uses GPT-4.1 as the default model (previously 4o). In our testing, it delivers significantly better performance—faster responses, higher quality suggestions, and greater efficiency overall. More models to choose from Want to try something else? You now have access to an ever-broader range of models: Model selections are now sticky, meaning your chosen m...
Inside Access: Join Us at VS Live! Redmond for a Week of Deep Developer Learning
A long time ago, I stood in a packed room at VS Live! and watched developers erupt in applause after a debugging demo shaved hours off a real-world problem. That was the moment I realized this wasn’t just a conference—it was a place where developers and toolmakers come together to push the craft forward. I’m excited to announce that I’ll be keynoting VS Live! Redmond 2025, August 4–8 at the Microsoft Conference Center—and I’d love for you to join us. This is more than just a developer event. It’s the one time each year when the Visual Studio, GitHub, and Azure engineering teams open our doors, share what we...
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 GitHub Copilot into an autonomous pair programmer capable of handling multi-step development tasks from end to end. It builds a plan, executes it, adapts along the way, and loops through tasks until completion. Agent mode can analyze your codebase, propose and apply edits, run commands, respond to build or lint errors, and self-correct. You can integrate additional tools from MCP servers to expand the agent's capabilities. Ask Mode, on the other hand works w...
Next edit suggestions available in Visual Studio
GitHub Copilot code completions, or gray text, are specialized in autocompleting unfinished code or providing helpful template code. In reality, coding activities are more diverse than writing new code. What if Copilot could better assist your coding not only with code generation, but your code editing activities as well? We are excited to announce next edit suggestions, or NES for short, is now available in Visual Studio 2022 17.14 to further improve your coding experience. NES leverages the previous edits made and predicts the next edit to come, whether it’s an insertion, deletion, or mix of both. Unlike Cop...
How to filter C++ Build Insights by project
Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14 comes with quality-of-life improvements to its C++ Build Insights integration that will make it easier for you to navigate large multi-project traces and handle long file names for your build inputs and artifacts. What is C++ Build Insights? C++ Build Insights is a powerful tool that lets you visualize and optimize the build process of your C++ projects. It leverage MSVC's trace capture technology and uses the Windows ETW framework to collect detailed information about every build event, such as compilation, linking, code analysis, and more. You can then view and analyze this ...
Cloud Academy: Unlock Your Azure Skills and Accelerate Your Career
When we launched the Cloud Academy benefit for Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise subscribers back in March 2025, our goal was simple: give you the hands-on, practical learning experience you need to confidently master Azure and cloud technologies — without spending a dime beyond your subscription. Why? Because in today’s fast-changing tech world, knowing theory isn’t enough. You need to do — to experiment, build, troubleshoot, and grow your skills in a real environment. That’s exactly what Cloud Academy delivers. From Frustration to Confidence: Learning That Fits Your Style If you’re like many deve...
Extension Manager updates in Visual Studio
The latest updates in Visual Studio 2022 introduced features specifically designed to improve how you manage extensions. These updates offer tools that help you automate processes, provide detailed controls for configuration, and enhance the user interface to streamline your development workflows. Seamless auto updates Visual Studio now automatically triggers updates whenever you open the Extension Manager window. This ensures you are consistently working with the latest features and fixes without needing to manually initiate updates. Infobar notifications for applied updates An Infobar will now appear wh...
Improve the commands in your extensions
As Visual Studio extension authors, our goal is to create tools that empower developers across diverse environments. A key part of this mission involves ensuring that your extension commands remain accessible and consistent across all Visual Studio locales. In your VSSDK extensions, by adding the CanonicalName property to your commands in the .vsct file, you can achieve greater resilience and user satisfaction for your extension. And with a few simple tricks, you can make your command names a lot prettier as well. Why add the CanonicalName property? When a Visual Studio extension supports multiple locales, t...
VisualStudio.Extensibility: Editor classification and updates to user prompt
We continue to invest in the VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK to allow users like you to create extensions that run faster and smoother than ever before! VisualStudio.Extensibility helps you build extensions that run outside the main Visual Studio IDE process for improved performance, reliability, and installation without restarting Visual Studio. Additional benefits include a sleek and intuitive .NET 8-based API and comprehensive, well-maintained documentation to help you develop amazing extensions faster than ever before. For the latest up-to-date docs and installation instructions, visit https://aka.ms/Vi...
Connecting to Private NuGet Feeds Just Got Easier
The Visual Studio 2022 17.14 update is here, and it brings great quality-of-life improvements—especially around NuGet authentication. From context about the authentication needs of private NuGet feeds to a simplified account selection workflow, this update helps you stay focused on your code! If you haven’t already, download the latest Visual Studio update to take advantage of this and the rest of the improvements. Streamlining the NuGet authentication experience Over the past year, we’ve made significant strides to improve the identity and authentication experiences across Visual Studio 2022. For instance, we ...
Faster .NET Upgrades Powered by GitHub Copilot
Introducing GitHub Copilot app modernization – Upgrade for .NET You probably don’t look forward to the process of modernizing your applications. It can be time consuming, risky, and full of manual toil. Today we’re changing that. We’re thrilled to introduce the public preview of GitHub Copilot app modernization - Upgrade for .NET, an AI-powered experience that helps you bring your .NET applications to the latest version quicker and more confidently than ever before. Powered by GitHub Copilot and Agent Mode, it serves as an intelligent upgrade companion that understands your code, determines the right upgrade ...
How to Watch Microsoft Build 2025 Online
Microsoft Build 2025 Is Here! — How to Make the Most of It Virtually It’s that time again—Microsoft Build has started! Microsoft Build 2025 runs this week (May 19–22)—and now’s the perfect time to catch the sessions live or watch past sessions on-demand. This year, Build is more accessible than ever. Every keynote, breakout session, demo theater, and even our hands-on labs are available to stream—live or on-demand—completely free. No travel. No ticket. Just you, your browser, and some of the best developer content of the year. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside our Product Managers and Engineeri...
Agent mode has arrived in preview for Visual Studio
Plan, build, test, and fix — all from one prompt. Agent mode is now available in public preview for all users in Visual Studio 17.14. Agent mode in Visual Studio allows you to define tasks using natural language, with Copilot autonomously planning, editing your codebase, invoking tools, and iterating to resolve issues. Unlike Copilot Chat or Edits, agent mode doesn’t stop at one suggestion or file edit but works iteratively until the task is complete. What can agent mode do? Agent mode doesn’t just help you write code — it helps you finish the job. All of this is done iteratively, meaning that Copilo...
🎉 Visual Studio 2022 v17.14 is now generally available!
We’re thrilled to announce the general availability of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14! This release continues our mission to empower developers with faster, smarter, and more productive tools across all workloads. There is so much for developers to love in this release, so be sure to check out the release notes for the full list. This is only the beginning, going forward, we’ll be bringing new features to you even faster with a new monthly release cadence for stable releases of Visual Studio! Here are some of the highlights you can look forward to when you update to 17.14 today! AI Assisted Development ...
Set the default file encoding
Have you ever encountered unexpected issues due to file encoding when working in cross-platform environments? These frustrating problems can disrupt your workflow and consume valuable time. Visual Studio addresses these concerns with a new feature – the Default File Encoding option. You can now specify the encoding Visual Studio should use when saving files. This ensures that files are saved with the correct encoding, minimizing potential issues. Developers often work on projects across different platforms, each requiring specific file encodings. Incorrectly managed encodings can lead to various issues, fro...
Effortless adjustments with an adaptive paste
Find yourself needing to adjust pasted code to actually work in your project? Visual Studio 2022 introduces the capability to adapt your pasted code with Copilot to reduce the time you spend on making tedious changes. Streamline manual code modifications with adaptive paste When you're copying and pasting code, the process often comes with extra steps. Adjusting parameters, correcting styling, or fixing even the most minor errors can slow down your workflow. These small, repetitive tasks add up and disrupt your focus. Addressing these challenges, Visual Studio introduces a new Copilot-powered capability tha...
Toolbox Support for Explicit Assembly References in Windows Forms Out-of-Process Designer
Visual Studio 17.14 Preview 3 introduces a new feature that enhances the Windows Forms out-of-process designer experience for .NET Framework projects. This release brings Toolbox support for Explicit Assembly References, addressing a long-standing need in legacy application development and migration workflows. What Are Explicit Assembly References? Explicit Assembly References are stand-alone assemblies directly referenced in your project. They are not pulled in through NuGet packages, project references, or the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). These assemblies often represent legacy .NET Framework components, ...
GitHub Copilot Highlights in Visual Studio 17.14 Preview 3 (Available Now)
Visual Studio 17.14 Preview 3 is now available! The GitHub Copilot experience in Visual Studio is continuously updated to provide the latest advancements in AI-assisted development. The following features and improvements have been recently released in Visual Studio version 17.14 Preview 3. (Remember, preview versions of Visual Studio can be run side by side with the main releases) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg5RC21uWi8 A guided Walkthrough for getting started If you're new to GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio and are looking for a quick, guided way to get started, this feature is for you. Head to ...
.NET Aspire and Azure Functions integration preview
Have you ever struggled with integrating serverless technology into your existing .NET projects? The new update in Visual Studio has got you covered. Say hello to the powerful integration of .NET Aspire with Azure Functions, making your development process smoother than ever before. With this release of Visual Studio, Azure Functions developers can enlist in .NET Aspire orchestration when creating a new Azure Functions project. This simple addition transforms your workflow by including an App Host and a Service Defaults project in your solution right from the get-go. Check out this video by James Montemagno sh...
Multi-Process CPU Usage Analysis in Visual Studio
Streamlined Performance Insights Across Processes The Visual Studio Profiler's CPU Usage tool and Instrumentation tool now supports multi-process analysis, providing a unified view of CPU activity across multiple processes. With performance graphs featuring distinct, color-coded stacked swim lanes for each process, diagnosing and optimizing CPU usage is now more efficient than ever. Tackling Multi-Process Complexity Analyzing CPU usage for applications across multiple processes has traditionally been challenging. Identifying performance bottlenecks with multiple processes requires manual correlation of dat...
Your Pluralsight Benefit Just Got Better
As I talk with Visual Studio developers about the learning and skilling benefits included in their subscription, one thing I hear often is: “I wish I had more time to actually use Pluralsight.” Starting today, I’m pleased to share that we’re doing something about that. We’ve extended access to Pluralsight for all Visual Studio subscribers—12 months for Enterprise and 6 months for Professional—giving you more time to build skills, prepare for certifications, and stay ahead in a fast-moving industry. Why this matters We know developers are juggling a lot—projects, meetings, and ever-evo...
View and manage git tags
Are you tired of switching between your IDE and command-line tools to manage Git tags? We’ve got the perfect solution for you! With the latest update, Visual Studio empowers you to seamlessly view and manage Git tags directly within the Git Repository window. This streamlined workflow ensures you remain within the familiar environment of the IDE, enhancing your productivity and efficiency when working with Git tags. Effortless navigation and action Visual Studio now allows you to handle Git tags without ever leaving the IDE. Gone are the days of interrupting your workflow to open a separate Git tool. The...
Debugging with the AI-powered IEnumerable visualizer
Are you tired of wrestling with complex LINQ queries during debugging? Visual Studio 2022 has introduced powerful new improvement, powered by AI, to simplify your workflow with its editable expression feature in the IEnumerable Visualizer. These added functionalities aim to make debugging more intuitive and efficient, helping you write and refine LINQ queries with ease. Say goodbye to frustration and hello to efficiency with the new enhancement! The Challenge: Crafting Complex and Desired LINQ Expressions Generating and troubleshooting LINQ queries can be a tedious and intricate process, often demanding prec...
Introducing Visual Studio Hub
The Visual Studio Hub is here! Keeping up with the latest Visual Studio updates, features, and resources can feel like a full-time job. We’ve heard it time and time again—you want a simpler way to stay informed without digging through scattered blog posts, release notes, and social media updates. That’s why we created Visual Studio Hub—a single destination to help you quickly find what matters most. Whether you’re looking for the newest features, GitHub Copilot resources, upcoming events, or expert insights from our product teams, the Hub makes it easy to stay connected with everything happening in the ...
Enhance Pull Request Reviews with In-Depth Feedback
Visual Studio 2022 has taken the pull request experience to the next level by making reviews interactive. We previously enabled viewing your pull request comments inline in your working files. Now, the latest update empowers you to add comments directly within the IDE, streamlining the review process. Now, pull request reviewers can conduct deep reviews with the navigational power of the IDE and stay in their focused environment. We heard from your feedback that the web experience for reviewing pull requests can only go so far. When you need to really understand your colleagues' proposed changes, it's best...
Find the IDE features you need with GitHub Copilot and Search
Ever find yourself needing to locate a specific menu item, command, or option in Visual Studio, but you don't know its name or location? Do you often struggle to find detailed instructions on using certain features effectively? Now, there’s a solution to get you the information you need right in the IDE. Visual Studio now makes it easy to access GitHub Copilot Chat from Feature Search (Ctrl+Q). Clicking “Ask Copilot” will send your query to GitHub Copilot Chat and get detailed responses, without leaving Visual Studio and search for docs online. This tool interprets the semantic meaning of your query,...
Boost your GitHub productivity with our new multi-account support!
Managing your GitHub identity in Visual Studio 2022 just got easier! Our latest update overhauls the GitHub account management experience and improves how you work with multiple accounts, especially for GitHub Copilot and version control scenarios. In this post, we'll detail how these changes will make your GitHub workflow smoother, from the moment you start using Visual Studio to your everyday coding. Onboarding Improvements The latest Visual Studio 2022 update streamlines your GitHub experience right from the very start. You can now Sign in with your GitHub account during the first launch experience: I...
Introducing automatic documentation comment generation in Visual Studio
We are excited to announce that Copilot is now automatically integrated into Visual Studio’s editor to help you generate doc comments for functions. This new feature aims to streamline your documentation process and enhance your coding experience. To access these updates, you will need a GitHub Copilot subscription. If you don’t already have GitHub Copilot, you can sign up for free here. AI doc comment generation If you have automatic doc comment generation enabled via your settings, you can simply type what would trigger your doc comment format (such as ///) and Copilot suggestions will automatically fill o...
New, Simpler Solution File Format
For years, you’ve worked with Visual Studio’s solution file (*.SLN) format, and while it’s a core part of your project organization, we know the experience hasn’t always been smooth. Whether you’ve been modifying, maintaining, or trying to resolve merge conflicts, it’s often felt more like a hassle than it should be. We understand your frustrations, and we’re here to talk about why it’s time for a change and how a new solution file format can make your life easier. The Challenges Despite being a critical element of the Visual Studio ecosystem, the existing solution file format has its share of drawbacks: ...
Make more sense of multithreaded debugging
Debugging complex programs often feels like navigating a labyrinth of threads and stack traces. The challenge of understanding thread behaviors and tracing issues can be daunting, leading to longer development times and increased frustration. But now, there's a solution that simplifies this process—introducing AI-powered thread summaries in Parallel Stacks Window with Visual Studio. To address these challenges, Visual Studio introduces two AI-powered features that make debugging more intuitive: thread summaries and app summarization. These enhancements bring clarity to your debugging workflow by providing con...
GPT-4o Copilot code completion model available now in Visual Studio public preview
We are excited to announce that the new GPT-4o Copilot code completion model is now available for GitHub Copilot users in Visual Studio starting in 17.14 Preview 2! This new model, based on GPT-4o mini, has undergone additional training on over 275,000 high-quality public repositories across more than 30 popular programming languages. As a result, developers can expect more accurate suggestions and better performance. Try it out now! For Visual Studio users who have yet to use GitHub Copilot, get started today! There’s even a free plan that includes 2,000 completions and 50 chats per month. You can sign up ...
Unlock Free Access to Cloud Academy: A New Benefit for Visual Studio Subscribers
I’m very excited to share some great news with you! Starting today, if you’re a Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise on an annual paid subscription, you can get free access to Cloud Academy from QA—no trial, and no credit card required. This exclusive benefit is included with your Visual Studio subscription and provides 12 months of free access to Cloud Academy. Act fast—this is a limited-time offer. Just log in to the Visual Studio subscriptions portal at my.visualstudio.com and activate your free plan. What is Cloud Academy? Cloud Academy, now part of QA, is a premier learning platform that helps deve...
New Debugging and Profiling Features in Visual Studio (v17.13)
The latest Visual Studio update (v17.13) brings a strong set of debugging and profiling features designed to speed up troubleshooting, making it more efficient. With AI-driven features in this release, variable analysis and data inspection are smarter and more intuitive, and problems are easier to identify and debug. Profiling tool improvements also deliver better support and visualization for multi-process execution, native code, and async workflows, with clearer insights into performance bottlenecks. For a full list of debugger and diagnostics features in this release, check out the release notes. GitHub C...
Great new productivity features in Visual Studio
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that matter the most. In the latest version of Visual Studio, we’ve added some features and tweaks that aim to put a smile on your face and make you more productive. Here is a list of some of these, and if you want the full list, make sure to check out the release notes. Customize file encoding Developers working in cross-platform environments often need files to be saved with specific file encodings. Changing these encodings can lead to various issues. Visual Studio now allows you to set the default file encoding for saving files. This feature ensures that your prefe...
Catch issues before you commit to Git
Discovering issues with code changes after committing changes can be frustrating. Fortunately, Visual Studio offers a new feature that helps you catch potential problems early, improving your code quality. Visual Studio now includes a feature powered by GitHub Copilot that lets you review your local code changes before committing them, before they are part of your pull request. This can help identify performance and security issues early, ensuring you maintain a higher quality codebase. How to Get Started To use this feature, ensure your GitHub Copilot subscription is active and enabled within ...
Claude 3.7 Now Available in GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio
The world of AI is evolving at a breathtaking pace, and today brings an exciting milestone for developers and tech enthusiasts alike. Anthropic’s newest release, Claude 3.7, is now available directly within GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio 2022 17.13, heralding a new era of seamlessly integrated, advanced AI coding assistance. This new Sonnet model supports the non-thinking modes in Copilot. How to Access Claude 3.7 Getting started is easy: If you don’t see Claude 3.7 as an option, there could be two reasons: Learn More For further details, check out the Using Claude Sonne...
Leverage vision in Copilot Chat
Now, in the preview channel, you can attach images in GitHub Copilot chat to help you illustrate your ideas effectively and get the best responses. Imagine working on a UI development task where describing a design or layout through text just doesn't cut it. Or perhaps you're debugging an issue and need to share a screenshot of an error state or message. Starting in 17.13 Preview channels, you can now paste an image from your clipboard or use the paperclip icon in the chat window to upload your image directly from your file explorer. Simply add your prompt text and send! Copilot will analyze the image and...
Unlocking More Power: Tool Calling in GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio
Have you ever been frustrated when Copilot doesn’t understand you? While it can’t read your mind, we’ve been working hard to make your coding experience smoother. Previously, Copilot in Visual Studio could look at files in your repository, but you needed to specify the context of your code manually. We understand this wasn’t the most intuitive experience, so we’ve been working on a smarter way to infer information automatically. Introducing Tool Calling: A Smarter Copilot Tool Calling is here—a major update that changes how you interact with Copilot. Now, Copilot can automatically search for more relevant co...
Introducing Code Referencing for GitHub Copilot Completions in Visual Studio
When GitHub Copilot completions (or “gray text”) pop up on your screen, have you ever wondered where does the completions come from and worried about if it matches with public code leading to license issues? If you have, we are introducing code referencing to support you and provide more transparency! We are excited to announce that code referencing is available now for GitHub Copilot Completions in Visual Studio 2022 17.13, a feature previously introduced in Copilot Chat (see previous blog post). So you can feel more confident when accepting the completions! Learn about Completions Public Code Match When yo...
VisualStudio.Extensibility: Tagger support and updates to settings
We continue to invest in the VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK to allow users like you to create extensions that run faster and smoother than ever before! VisualStudio.Extensibility helps you build extensions that run outside the main Visual Studio IDE process for improved performance, reliability, and installation without restarting Visual Studio. Additional benefits include a sleek and intuitive .NET 8-based API and comprehensive, well-maintained documentation to help you develop amazing extensions faster than ever before. For the latest up-to-date docs and installation instructions, visit https://aka.ms/Vi...
New restrictions on package loading
As Visual Studio transitions its core packages and services to an async loading/retrieval model, we've identified bugs in both the initial async implementation and the existing synchronous package loading mechanism. While most of these bug fixes have been transparent to extenders, one requires attention due to changed constraints. This post highlights that change. Note that this is only applicable to VSSDK based extensions and does not apply to VisualStudio.Extensiblity. For more information on the differences between extensibility models in Visual Studio, please refer to this documentation: Choose the right V...
First preview of Visual Studio 2022 v17.14
We are pleased to announce the release of Visual Studio 2022 v17.14 Preview 1, marking the initial preview of our next update to Visual Studio. This update prioritizes delivering exceptional developer experiences, with an emphasis on stability and security, as well as AI enhancements. Download the preview and see the full list of enhancements in the release notes. Stability & security In this release, we’re focusing on bug fixes that help make Visual Studio more stable and secure. This is something we do from time to time. Our goal is to ensure that developers can work in a reliable and secure environme...
Visual Studio 2022 v17.13 is Now Available!
We are excited to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2022 v17.13. This update focuses on stability and security, along with continuous improvements for all developers using Visual Studio. Based on your feature requests, several new tools and enhancements have been added to this release. This update includes improvements for developers, such as advanced debugging capabilities, efficient code management, and enhanced security features. These additions aim to simplify workflows and boost productivity. For detailed information on each new feature, check out the release notes. If you’re pressed f...
VisualStudio.Extensibility: Managing .NET runtime versions
We continue to invest in the VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK to allow developers like you to create extensions that run faster and smoother than ever before! VisualStudio.Extensibility helps you build extensions that run outside the main Visual Studio IDE process for improved performance and reliability, and that can be installed without the need to restart Visual Studio. Additional benefits include a sleek and intuitive .NET 8-based API and comprehensive, well-maintained documentation to help you develop amazing extensions faster than ever before. In the recent releases of Visual Studio, we've focused on d...
HTTP File updates for Request Variables and more
Many users have requested adding support for Request Variables in HTTP files in Visual Studio. With Request Variables, you can send an HTTP request and then use data from the response, or request, in any subsequent request that is sent from the HTTP file. We have also added support for a shared environment, $shared, which enables you to share variables across different environments. In this post we will outline the new support which has been added for Request Variables and more. All the features listed in this post are included in Visual Studio 2022 17.12+. Request Variables When working with APIs it’s common t...
Your fonts are now preserved when changing theme
Do you find yourself adjusting your font settings every time you change themes in Visual Studio, We've made some changes that we think will help. The latest update in Visual Studio 2022 allows theme switching without affecting font settings. This feature maintains the selected font face and size regardless of the chosen theme, while font colors continue to adapt to the theme. Seamless integration for a better user experience This improvement is automatically enabled for all users, facilitating a consistent appearance in your coding environment. If you prefer the prior behavior, you can revert it easily. ...
Customize your AI-generated git commit messages
When it comes to collaborative software development, clear and effective communication is key. One area that often gets overlooked is the Git commit message. Poorly crafted suggestions and feedback for the AI-generated commit messages, and now you can add custom prompt instructions! This new capability enables you to tailor commit messages to fit your workflow and team's standards seamlessly. This means you have control over the number of lines, the length of the lines, and even the style of the commit message. By specifying these details, you ensure that each commit message is meaningful and consistent...
Customizing collapsed text Indicators
Visual Studio 2022 introduces new options for customizing the collapsed text indicator, which helps in distinguishing between different sections of collapsed text in the editor. This aims to make the coding environment more intuitive and easier to use by providing additional customization for visual cues. Customizing your coding environment You can now personalize the color and background of the editor’s collapsed text indicator independently by setting custom colors for both the collapsed and expanded text indicators. This feature can be accessed via the Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and C...
Iterate across multiple files more efficiently with GitHub Copilot Edits
GitHub Copilot Edits in Visual Studio 2022 combines the conversational flow of chat and an inline review experience to help you iterate across your codebase with more control and efficiency. 💡 Here’s how Copilot Edits helps with iterating across multiple files: Available in Visual Studio 2022 17.13, released February 11th. *Preview versions of this feature were released in 17.13 Preview, released December 18th, 2024. Get started with GitHub Copilot Edits in Visual Studio For more details on how to use Copilot Edits, visit our documentation. Watch Copil...
Announcing a free GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio
We're excited to announce an all new free plan for GitHub Copilot, available for everyone today in Visual Studio. All you need is a GitHub account. No trial. No subscription. No credit card. With GitHub Copilot Free, you’ll receive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8CkP7SC-kM GitHub Copilot’s Features in Visual Studio GitHub Copilot transforms your Visual Studio experience with powerful features designed to save you time and supercharge your productivity: Copilot Edits: Multi-File Editing Copilot Edits helps you quickly make changes to multiple files with just one prompt. Edits combines t...
Our Favorite NEW Visual Studio Features of 2024
Last year, the Visual Studio team delivered many new developer-focused improvements and AI integrations, many of which came directly from your feedback on Developer Community. In this post, we highlight the team’s favorite features from 2024 that boost productivity, streamline workflows, and enhance your coding experience. Let’s dive in! Image Hover Preview: See your images instantly! (Mads Kristensen 00:30) Struggling to visualize referenced images in your code? Visual Studio’s Image Hover Preview solves this by showing a quick preview of any image, complete with dimensions and file size, when you hover ...
Join us at VS Live! 2025 Las Vegas
Join Your Favorite Speakers at VS Live! Las Vegas With the new year here, many developers are looking for the best ways to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. That’s why Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas, March 10-14, 2025, is a must-attend event! Stay ahead of the curve with the latest enhancements in .NET, Azure, GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio, and more. Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas is your fastest way to catch up on the innovations shaping the tech landscape. What Makes VS Live! Las Vegas a Must-Attend? From hands-on workshops to deep-dive sessions, this event is loaded with practical g...
Enhanced Change Signature in C++
Change Signature allows you to modify a function's parameters, including reordering, adding, removing, or altering them across various locations. Previously, the Change Signature feature in Visual Studio involved multiple clicks and nested pop-up windows. In Visual Studio 2022 version 17.12, we've reduced the number of clicks and eliminated these nested steps to streamline the process. Simplified Process with Intuitive Interface We have updated the user interface for the Change Signature feature based on direct feedback we received from C++ developers to reduce the number of clicks and pop-up windows. It al...
Benchmarking with Visual Studio Profiler
In Visual Studio 17.13 Preview we have released our updated BenchmarkDotNet diagnosers, allowing you to use more of the tools in the performance profiler to analyze benchmarks. With this change it is super quick to dig into CPU usage and allocations of benchmarks making the measure, change, measure cycle quick and efficient. Benchmarking a real project So, to show how we can use the tools to make things better let's go ahead and benchmark a real project. At the time of writing this article, CsvHelper is the 67th most popular package on Nuget.org with over 9 million downloads of the current version. If we can be...
Unlocking insights with Meter Histogram in the profiler
Are you struggling with performance bottlenecks in your applications? Look no further! Visual Studio 2022 introduces the Meter Histogram feature in its performance profiling suite, providing you with the tools to analyze and visualize histogram data like never before. The Meter Histogram is a key enhancement to Visual Studio's performance profiling suite. This feature enables you to capture and analyze histogram data generated by various performance instruments, offering clear insights into the distribution of your application's data. By visualizing this data, you can easily identify patterns and anomalies...
Dock the Code Search window in Visual Studio 2022
Ever felt frustrated with the search window cluttering your workspace? The latest feature in Visual Studio 2022 gives you more control over the behavior of the Code and Feature Search window, making your search experience smoother and more efficient. Some users have shared that the search window feels intrusive, interrupting your work by appearing mid-screen or on the wrong screen and taking up precious screen real estate. You now have the option to turn the search window into a tool window and dock it where you’d like. Choose how you want your search window Visual Studio now allows you to dock the searc...
Go to line anywhere with Code Search for Visual Studio 2022
Finding the exact line of code where an issue is occurring can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Whether you are debugging an error on line 43 of a file or diving into a specific section of code, you can efficiently jump to the right places with this newest addition to Code Search. In Code Search, you can now jump to a specific line in the current file or another file, making it faster and easier to move around your codebase. Navigate to a line in the current document No need to scroll endlessly to find a specific line. With the updated Code Search, you can swiftly jump to any line in the current...
Connect securely to your Azure resources
Visual Studio 2022's Connected Services features are being updated to help you start secure. In the past, for example with Azure Storage, we’d inject the entire connection string into your configuration. With this update, we’ve removed the secrets from the UX – and from what we save to configuration – altogether. This means your code has fewer secrets in it, so you won’t push those into your source control repository inadvertently. Integrated authentication, by default Prior to this update, Connected Services would inject secret-inclusive connection strings for resources like Azure Storage into your secrets...
Security updates to Azure publishing from Visual Studio
Visual Studio 2022 introduces a new feature to improve the security of publishing applications to Azure App Service. This feature is designed to disable Basic Authentication and enable integrated security for a more secure publishing process. Basic Authentication has been identified as a less secure method for managing app deployments. Visual Studio 2022 addresses this issue by offering you an option to disable Basic Authentication, which enhances security by using integrated authentication. The problem with Basic Authentication Basic Authentication involves sending user credentials in a format that is n...
GitHub Copilot Free is here in Visual Studio
If you haven’t already heard, GitHub just announced Copilot Free! And great news: you can already start using Copilot Free right now in Visual Studio. It's available now, and we're putting the finishing touches on a more streamlined experience in January. We’re excited to bring these benefits to the entire Visual Studio family. With Copilot Free, you’ll have AI-powered tools right at your fingertips—smarter debugging, AI generated commit messages, AI-breakpoint placement, and of course, direct access to Completions, Chat, and much more. Developers have seen a 25% speed increase with Copilot—and now you can exp...
Refresh your Find results
Are you tired of having to repeatedly launch the Find window in Visual Studio to update your search results? Whether you've just refactored some code or pulled recent changes, having to redo a search to get updated results is no longer necessary. With the new refresh option, you can now update your Find results without the hassle of starting over. The Refresh search results button in Visual Studio 2022 will save you time and effort when searching through your code. Refresh your previous Find No more friction when updating your earlier Find results! After completing a Find, you can click the clockwise arr...
Create internal GitHub repos for your team
Visual Studio 2022 now includes support for creating internal repositories for GitHub organizations. This feature allows developers to work within their GitHub organization's guidelines within the Visual Studio environment more effectively. Managing repositories involves configuring varying levels of visibility and permissions. Visual Studio 2022’s new feature aims to smooth this process by providing support for internal repositories, ensuring that developers can be aligned with their organization's polices when they create new repositories. How it works In the Create a Git repository dialog, the visibil...
Boost your Git confidence with the new file rename notification
Have you ever renamed a file in Solution Explorer and wondered if Git is tracking your changes correctly? You're not alone. Many developers have found this process confusing and worry whether their changes are being properly staged in Git. But worry no more - there's a solution! When you rename files in Solution Explorer, Visual Studio 2022 will now remind you to stage your changes to see the renamed files in Git. This small but mighty notification ensures that Git is recognizing your file change. Why This Matters There is often confusion on how Git works when you rename files, especially since there’s a...
Effortless publishing with Azure Functions Flex Consumption
Struggling with complex deployment processes for your serverless applications? Visual Studio 2022 introduces a seamless solution with the new Azure Functions Flex Consumption hosting plan, now generally available. Imagine a world where deploying your serverless applications to a hosting plan that supports fast scaling and VNet is as simple as a right-click. With the Azure Functions Flex Consumption hosting plan, this is now a reality. This feature allows you to right-click publish to Flex directly from Visual Studio 2022, streamlining your workflow and saving valuable time. One of the standout features ...
Effortless publishing to Azure WebJobs on Linux
Are you tired of the cumbersome process involved in publishing your .NET console applications to Azure WebJobs on Linux? For developers yearning for a seamless and efficient method to deploy their applications, Visual Studio 2022 introduces a much-anticipated solution. Visual Studio 2022 now supports right-click publishing to Azure WebJobs on Linux, making the deployment process faster and more intuitive than ever before. This new feature brings much-needed convenience to developers working with cross-platform .NET 5.0+ Console Apps, allowing them to effortlessly publish their code with just a few clicks. ...
Keep working with non-blocking Code Cleanup
Are you tired of waiting for Code Cleanup to finish every time you save your work? Visual Studio 2022 will no longer lock up and get in the way of your tasks as it’s cleaning up the code under the covers. Every developer knows the importance of maintaining clean code. However, the traditional Code Cleanup process in Visual Studio could take a while to run and lock up the entire IDE, which made it inappropriate to run on save for all scenarios. These interruptions could break your flow and slow down your development progress. Now, when you save your work, Code Cleanup can run seamlessly in the background...
Introducing Code Referencing for GitHub Copilot Chat in Visual Studio
Are you tired of the uncertainty that comes with using code suggestions from AI tools? We've got exciting news for you! Visual Studio 2022 now includes code referencing in GitHub Copilot, ensuring greater transparency and control for developers. We are thrilled to announce that code referencing is now available in GitHub Copilot Chat within Visual Studio. This new feature introduces a filter that detects when code suggestions match public code on GitHub, providing you with valuable context to make more informed decisions about the code you incorporate into your projects. Make Informed Decisions with Code Sugg...
How Inline Return Values Simplify Debugging in Visual Studio 2022
Have you ever found yourself creating temporary variables just to inspect return values from functions? It’s a small task that can quickly become tedious, breaking your rhythm and cluttering up your code. Visual Studio 2022 introduces a smarter way to handle this with "Inline Return Values," allowing you to stay focused on coding without the extra steps. This new feature allows you to view return values directly in your code, right where you need them. With Copilot integration, you can go a step further by analyzing the return values in real time. It simplifies understanding and verifying your code’s behav...
Introducing the Copy Git Permalink Feature in Visual Studio 17.12
We are excited to announce the release of the Copy Git Permalink feature in Visual Studio 17.12. This new functionality streamlines the process of sharing code references, enhancing collaboration and ensuring that critical context is preserved. Effortless Code Sharing If you’ve found yourself needing to share code snippets with colleagues, you know the challenges of preserving context. With the new Copy Git Permalink feature, you can now generate a permalink directly from Visual Studio to the remote repository. Simply select the desired code, right-click, and choose the “Copy Permalink” option under the Git s...
AI-Powered Insights: Streamlining Variable Analysis with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio
Tired of spending countless hours troubleshooting errors and unexpected values in your code? Visual Studio 2022 introduces GitHub Copilot Variable Analysis. This powerful tool makes inspecting and analyzing variables from Locals, Autos, watch windows and DataTips effortless, helping you solve issues faster and cutting down on time and frustration. Enhanced Debugging Experience Debugging can often resemble searching for a needle in a haystack, especially in complex codebases. But GitHub Copilot Variable Analysis can make the debugging experience much easier and smoother. Simply hover over any variable in the Loc...
Transform your debugging experience with GitHub Copilot
Are your unit tests failing, and do you want to debug them more effectively? The latest feature in Visual Studio 2022, powered by GitHub Copilot, has the perfect solution for you. Introducing the Debug with Copilot button in Test Explorer, this feature takes the hassle out of debugging failed tests and gets you closer to passing tests in no time. Debugging failing unit tests can often be a tedious and frustrating process. Developers spend significant time identifying the root cause of the failure and figuring out the steps to resolve it. This time-consuming process can delay development timelines and reduc...
Updates for C++ developers in Visual Studio 2022 17.12
Visual Studio 17.12 is here and comes with a host of new features for C++ developers. We’ve made improvements across our toolchain, C++ Build Insights, Unreal Engine support, and more. This post gives a quick overview of what’s available; for all the details, see What’s New for C++ Developers in Visual Studio 2022 17.12 on the C++ blog. Standard Library and MSVC Compiler As always, you can find all the details about our STL work in the changelog on GitHub. Thanks to everyone who contributed changes for this release! On the conformance side, we have finished the implementation of C++23’s P2286R8 Formatting Ra...
Debugger and Diagnostics updates in Visual Studio 17.12
We are thrilled to announce a host of exciting new features in Visual Studio 17.12, designed to enhance your development experience and boost your productivity. Our team has been working diligently to address some of the most popular requests from our developer community, and we are confident that these updates will significantly improve your workflow. For a full list of updates, check out the release notes. Display Inline Method Return Values The Visual Studio debugger now displays inline values for return statements, responding to one of the most requested features from the developer community. This enh...
Copying error messages just got easier
Have you ever been frustrated by the tedious process of copying error descriptions from the Error List? Previously with Visual Studio, copying an error would include all column headers and row values, which isn’t always what you want. If you were planning to search for the error online, it was a hassle to clean up the text after pasting. Now when you `Ctrl+C` on a row in the Error List, only the error description is copied to the clipboard. You can still copy the entire row with `Ctrl+Shift+C` and now even directly search the web for the error. This makes it easy to get the information you need, saving pre...
Top 5 GitHub Copilot Features in Visual Studio from Microsoft Ignite 2024
At this year’s Microsoft Ignite, it was truly exciting to see Scott, Dalia, and Jessie demo some of the most innovative features of GitHub Copilot that are transforming the developer experience in Visual Studio. From the breakout session, we highlighted five standout features that are pushing productivity to the next level. Whether you're working on complex edits or crafting custom workflows, these tools showcase how AI can elevate your coding game in ways you never thought possible. *Note: It will take 24-48 hours after the session for the recording to be uploaded. 1. Copilot Edits: Collaborative Ite...
Making you more productive with Visual Studio v17.12
The 12th update to Visual Studio 2022 is packed with lots of exciting new features that users have been asking for! Here are some of the awesome highlights from this release that are some of my personal favorites. For all the details, be sure to check out our release notes. Copy from the Error List You see an error in the Error List that you don't know how to fix. So, you select it and hit Ctrl+C to copy the description for a web search. After you've pasted it into the search engine, you realize it copied all column headers and row values instead of just the description. Now you must delete everything except th...
Copy files across instances of Visual Studio
Transferring code files between different instances of Visual Studio has often been a tedious task. To simplify this process, Visual Studio 2022 now includes a feature that allows you to easily copy and paste code files and folders between instances using the Solution Explorer. This enhancement aims to streamline workflow and save time. Until now, moving code files and folders between different Visual Studio instances has been a hassle. Developers often had to manually relocate files, risking errors and inefficiencies in their workflow. With the new copy and paste functionality, this problem is now a thing...
VisualStudio.Extensibility 17.12: CodeLens support is here!
We continue to invest in the VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK to allow users like you to create extensions that run faster and smoother than ever before! VisualStudio.Extensibility helps you build extensions that run outside the main Visual Studio IDE process for improved performance and reliability, and can be installed without the need to restart Visual Studio. Additional benefits include a sleek and intuitive .NET 8-based API and comprehensive, well-maintained documentation to help you develop amazing extensions faster than ever before. This 17.12 release builds on our previous releases and brings support for...
Git tooling updates in Visual Studio 17.12
We are thrilled to announce the latest updates to Git tooling in Visual Studio, designed to enhance your development experience and streamline your workflow. These new features are in direct response to user feedback, ensuring that you have the tools you need to be more productive and efficient. For the full list, check out the release notes. Pull request drafts and templates You can now create pull request drafts and start your descriptions with GitHub templates in Visual Studio. These were the two top requests for the create a pull request experience. Draft PRs Use the drop-down menu on the Create button to...
Join Us at Microsoft Ignite: Unlock GitHub Copilot’s New Potential in Visual Studio
Get ready for an exciting Microsoft Ignite breakout session where we’re unveiling the latest advancements in GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio! Join Dalia Abo Sheasha, Jessie Houghton, and Scott Hanselman as they dive into how GitHub Copilot is evolving to help developers work smarter, collaborate better, and achieve more. Here’s a little preview of what we’ll be discussing: Enhanced AI-Powered Coding Experience We’ll be sharing some powerful new tools that make prompt crafting and code completion smoother than ever. Discover how GitHub Copilot’s conversational abilities are growing to bring even more ...
Fix Code with GitHub Copilot
Looking to resolve code issues quickly? The new GitHub Copilot feature integrated into the lightbulb and error list in Visual Studio 2022 offers a valuable solution for developers. Whether you're working in C# or C++, this feature will help you understand and address problems in your codebase more efficiently. The integration of GitHub Copilot into Visual Studio 2022 provides quick fixes and insightful explanations right at your fingertips. Say goodbye to sifting through documentation or conducting endless online searches to debug your code. The lightbulb and error list now offers direct access to GitHub Copil...
First preview of Visual Studio 2022 v17.13
We’re excited to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2022 v17.13 Preview 1 – the first preview of our next update to Visual Studio. This update focuses on providing fantastic developer experiences across the board, with a focus on stability & security, and AI & productivity. Download the preview and see the full list of enhancements in the release notes. Quality & security Ensuring the highest standards of quality and security is paramount. Visual Studio 2022 v17.13 incorporates robust quality and security enhancements designed to provide a seamless and secure development environment. ...
Visual Studio 2022 v17.12 with .NET 9
We are thrilled to announce the General Availability (GA) of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.12. This update focuses on providing fantastic developer experiences for working with .NET 9 projects and new AI productivity features, along with continuous improvements for all developers. Thanks to your continuous feature requests, we've incorporated many of them in this release. There's something new for every developer. We have added several new tools and enhancements that simplify your workflow and improve productivity. Whether you're looking for advanced debugging capabilities, more efficient code management, ...
Better GitHub Copilot Completions for C#
We're excited to announce a significant enhancement to GitHub Copilot that elevates your C# coding experience. Introducing the new update: GitHub Copilot code completions now provide more accurate and relevant autocomplete suggestions by incorporating additional C# context. Previously, GitHub Copilot generated suggestions based on the content of your currently active file and any other open files in your editor. While this approach was helpful, we have discovered that including more relevant context can greatly improve the quality of these suggestions. With this latest update, GitHub Copilot now automatical...
Introducing a new, more conversational way to chat with GitHub Copilot
In the fast-evolving world of software development, intuitive AI-driven interactions are becoming essential to unlocking new levels of productivity. Today, we’re excited to share our latest innovation - a guided chat experience within GitHub Copilot that reshapes how developers interact with AI. This guided chat experience is available in Visual Studio 2022 17.12 Preview 3 and above. This guided way to chat was created with one clear goal in mind: to make interactions between developers and AI more natural, effective, and aligned with everyday workflows. It is our deep belief that conversational AI is the futu...
Learn how to create a Client-Server Application in under 45 Minutes in the new Season of AI
What if you could create a robust, versatile client-server application in under 45 minutes? With Visual Studio and GitHub Copilot, this is not only possible but also efficient and enjoyable. This Season of AI, we show you how to use developer tools like GitHub Copilot to create apps from scratch. This season of AI occurs from October 1 through December 30, 2024, and the first 150 speakers with confirmed events will receive a special swag gift pack! You will experience firsthand how to: - Develop both server-side and client-side code using .NET, Blazor, and Minimal APIs. - Run and test your applicatio...
The making of Bring Back Plus/Minus
A lesson about the software forensics process involved in developing the Bring Back Plus/Minus extension, which brings back the plus/minus symbols to the editor outlining feature in Visual Studio 2022. While I did have the advantage of being able to look at the Visual Studio source code, I could have figured this out just as well without it, and that's the focus of this article. The investigation of how to bring back the plus/minus symbols started with this important clue from a comment on the Developer Community feedback ticket for this issue: However, Visual Studio has a very rich extensibility model, an...
Unreal Engine Toolbar in Visual Studio
In Visual Studio 2022 version 17.11, we’ve added a new Unreal Engine toolbar to Visual Studio. The Unreal Engine toolbar is a new feature that provides quick access to common Unreal Engine tasks. You can find the toolbar at the top of your code window when you have an Unreal Engine project loaded. The toolbar includes the following actions: Attach to Unreal Engine process: Lets you easily debug your game or editor by attaching to the running Unreal Engine process. You can choose which process to attach to from a drop-down menu. Rescan Blueprints Cache: Refreshes the cache of Blueprint symbols in Visu...
Create Unreal Engine modules faster
Unreal Engine modules help keep your code organized and modular. However, creating modules can be a tedious and error-prone process that involves manually editing configuration files and adding boilerplate code. Visual Studio 2022 version 17.11 comes with a new dialog to help with this process. With the new Add Module dialog, you can quickly add new modules to your project without leaving Visual Studio or manually editing configurations. How to use the Add Unreal Engine Module dialog To use the Add Unreal Engine Module dialog, you need to have an Unreal Engine project open in Visual Studio. You can do this b...
Easily add Unreal Engine classes to your C++ project
Visual Studio 2022 v17.11 introduces a new Add Unreal Engine Class dialog that lets you easily add common Unreal Engine classes to your project. You can also choose to which module to add your class, so you can keep your code organized and modular. To use this feature, you need to have an Unreal Engine project open in Visual Studio. Right click on the project in Solution Explorer and select Add > Unreal Engine Item. In the Add New Item dialog, select Unreal Engine Common Classes to open the Add Unreal Engine Class dialog. This dialog shows you a list of common Unreal Engine classes that you can use as a...
Upgrade Your Windows Forms .NET Projects to the Latest .NET Version for Enhanced Security
Each release of .NET introduces a host of new features and bug fixes that enhance both performance and security. To leverage these benefits both service and desktop application developers must upgrade their applications to the latest .NET versions. Just like other developers wanting to take advantage of the latest .NET enhancements, we are updating our design-time support policy. This update will enhance the safety of the Visual Studio WinForms design-time experience and motivate WinForms developers to update their applications for improved security. However, updating this policy will mean we will no longer supp...
Get Hands-On with Visual Studio, .NET, AI, and More at Live! 360 next month.
Visual Studio LIVE! Orlando 2024 November 17-22 | Loews Royal Pacific Resort, Orlando, FL We’re only four weeks away from the final Visual Studio Live! event of the year, and we’re close to capacity! Live! 360 Orlando offers something for everyone—whether you’re a developer, IT professional, data specialist, or cybersecurity expert. You’ll have the opportunity to learn from industry leaders while networking with peers who share similar roles. Packed Hands-On Labs and Workshops The week kicks off and wraps up with two full days of hands-on labs and workshops, featuring top experts like GitHub's Brian Randell a...
Debug CMake Scripts on Linux with Visual Studio
If you are working on a CMake project that targets Linux, you may have encountered some challenges when trying to debug your CMake scripts and CMakeLists.txt files. You may have wondered why your variables are not set correctly, or why your custom commands are not executed as expected. Or you may have simply wanted to step through your CMake scripts and see what is happening behind the scenes of the configure step. We are excited to announce that the CMake debugger in Visual Studio now has support for CMake projects targeting Linux via WSL or SSH. The CMake debugger allows you to debug your CMake scripts and C...
Improve your debugger game with editable expressions
Do you ever wish you could quickly test different queries on your collections or datasets while debugging? Do you want to save time and avoid writing code just to inspect your data? If you answered yes, then you will love the new editable expression feature in the Visual Studio debugger. This feature allows you to modify the expressions textbox on the top of the IEnumerable visualizer dialog with your desired LINQ expressions. The visualizer updates in real-time, reflecting the data change resulting from your query. You can easily apply different filters or sort orders to your collections based on your needs. ...
Easier localization with the new resource (.resx) manager
If you're developing applications that target multiple languages and cultures, you probably know how challenging it can be to manage the resources for each localization. You need to keep track of all the strings, images, icons, and other assets that are specific to each culture, and make sure they are consistent and up to date across your project. Fortunately, Visual Studio has a solution for you: the revamped Resource Explorer. This new feature lets you view, edit, and manage all your resources in one place, with a sleek and intuitive interface that is designed for the modern .NET developer. In this bl...
Accelerate C++ Debugging with Enhanced Conditional Breakpoints
Are you tired of waiting for your conditional breakpoints to hit in C++? Do you wish there was a way to speed up the debugging process and get to the root of the problem faster? If so, you're in luck! We have some exciting news for you: Visual Studio 2022 has significantly improved the performance of conditional breakpoints in C++ through a reworked implementation. This means you can now debug your C++ code faster and more efficiently than ever before. What are conditional breakpoints? Conditional breakpoints are a powerful debugging tool that only triggers when a specified condition is met. For instance...
Discover Hidden Insights with Profiler’s External Code Decompilation
Have you ever wondered what's happening under the hood of your .NET application? Do you want to quickly and easily identify and fix performance bottlenecks? If so, Visual Studio has the perfect tool for you: the profiler. The profiler allows you to analyze your code's performance, pinpoint hot paths, detect memory leaks, address thread contention, and more. It helps you measure CPU usage, memory consumption, and file activity, and lets you drill down into specific methods and lines of code. But what if the code you need to profile isn't yours? What if it's a third-party library, a NuGet package, or a framew...
Visual Studio 2022 – Recent performance enhancements
Visual Studio 2022 continues to be faster with each version. In this blog post we will highlight a couple of the more significant enhancements you’ll experience in 17.11, such as a more efficient C# language service, faster conditional breakpoints and symbol searches in C++. Reduced CPU usage by C# language service Code Indexing In 17.10 we revamped the code indexing system in the C# language service (Roslyn). It used to be both aggressive and highly intermittent. This would lead to high spikes of CPU usage, taking resources away from the operations users were performing, especially during times like solution...
Effortless Instrumentation profiling with Persistent Target Selection
Ever wished to assess your code's performance without repeatedly choosing the target process or executable for each instrumentation profiling session? If so, you're among many developers who find this task cumbersome and prone to errors, especially when profiling the same target repeatedly. We understand your frustration and have a solution: Visual Studio 2022 introduces a new feature that addresses this issue. The instrumentation tool now remembers your target selection across runs, providing a seamless experience and enhancing the continuity of your profiling sessions. With this improvement, you can m...
Creating a React TODO app in Visual Studio 2022
In this tutorial we will create a React front-end, with JavaScript, of a TODO web app using a Visual Studio 2022. To get started install Visual Studio with the Node.js development workload. This will include the JavaScript/TypeScript (JSTS) projects and the associated support. The code for this app can be found at sayedihashimi/todojswebapp (github.com). Create a new React project using the New Project Dialog in Visual Studio 2022. Use File > New > Project … to open that dialog. For this tutorial select the React App JavaScript template which is shown below. After clicking Next, give the project the ...
Organize Your Breakpoints like a pro
Do you feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of breakpoints in your Visual Studio project? Wish you could categorize and toggle them on and off with ease? The new breakpoint group feature in Visual Studio 2022 is here to transform your debugging experience. Breakpoint groups allow you to create custom collections of breakpoints and apply various actions to them. For example, you can enable or disable all breakpoints in a group or set conditions and actions for them or even make the whole group dependent on other breakpoints. But that's not all. You can also mark the selected breakpoint group as the defau...
Next-Gen Code Coverage in Visual Studio: Enhanced C++ Support and Security
We’re excited to share the latest changes in Visual Studio’s code coverage components. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our previous blog posts: What’s New in Our Code Coverage Tooling? and Code coverage features in Visual Studio Enterprise. C++ Code Coverage Tired of instable native code coverage that doesn’t support ARM64? Now, you can collect native code coverage for all your methods, including those on ARM64. We have completely overhauled the C++ code coverage support to improve reliability, performance, and security. The new implementation, powered by MSVC compiler tooling, now supports x86...
Level up your collaborations with the pull request experience in Visual Studio
One of our main goals is to help you and your team collaborate more effectively and efficiently on your software projects. That's why we are constantly improving our Version Control features, especially the ones related to the pull request workflow. Starting in Visual Studio version 17.11, you can enjoy a smoother and smarter pull request experience, from creating to reviewing to merging. You can link your Azure DevOps work items, and in both Azure DevOps and GitHub you can create draft PRs and use default templates. You can even get AI assistance to write your pull request descriptions. Plus, you can view and re...
Multi-Project Launch Configuration
Are you tired of the hassle of manually configuring your development environment every time you want to launch multiple projects? We've heard your feedback and are thrilled to announce a feature in Visual Studio that simplifies your workflow. The Multi-Project Launch Configuration feature in Visual Studio allows developers to set up and save profiles for launching specific projects within a multi-project solution in predefined states for debugging. This simplifies the process of working with complex solutions, improves debugging efficiency, and enables easy sharing of configurations among team members. En...
How to run .NET Framework apps natively on Arm64 devices
Are you developing .NET Framework applications for Arm-based processors? Do you want to take advantage of the performance and power efficiency of running your apps natively on Arm64 devices? If so, you'll be happy to hear that Visual Studio 2022 17.11 has a new feature that makes it easier than ever to do just that. Visual Studio 2022 natively supports building and debugging Arm64 apps on Arm-based processors. However, if you build your app with the AnyCPU setting, which is the default for most .NET Framework projects, your app will run on an Arm64 device using x64 emulation. While this may seem counterint...
Understanding the behavior of the XAML Designer with abstract base classes
Visual Studio 2022 introduced a new XAML designer for building WPF apps, with a goal of increasing the performance and reliability of the designer. The new designer can quickly open a XAML file by using WPF’s built-in parser and display. This new design has a nuanced behavior when the root XAML element derives from an abstract base class. This article helps with understanding implications for using an abstract base class and describes workarounds which can ensure a smooth design experience. The Challenge with Abstract Base Classes When working with the XAML Designer, the base class of the root element is instan...
VisualStudio.Extensibility 17.11: Settings and more Remote UI support
We continue to invest in the VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK to allow users like you to create extensions that run faster and smoother than ever before! VisualStudio.Extensibility helps you build extensions that run outside the main Visual Studio IDE process for improved performance and reliability. Additional benefits include a sleek and intuitive .NET 8-based API and comprehensive, well-maintained documentation to help you develop amazing extensions faster than ever before. This 17.11 release builds on our previous releases, bringing support for defining user-configurable settings for your extensions to allow...
Search scoping helps you find what you’re looking for
If you're working on a large and complex solution, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the number of results when you use code search in Visual Studio. You might be looking for a specific class, method, or variable, but end up scrolling through pages of irrelevant matches. Wouldn't it be nice if you could narrow down your search scope to only the parts of the solution that you care about? In the latest update of Visual Studio, you can now use the new scoping options in code search to filter your results by the entire solution, the current project, or the current document. You can also toggle the inclusion o...
Break for Async User-Unhandled exceptions in the Visual Studio Debugger
Before .NET 9, the debugger was unable to track exceptions thrown from user-code async methods into non-user code framework methods, such as ASP.NET middleware. We are pleased to announce that you will now start seeing the debugger stop for these user-unhandled exceptions in your ASP.NET applications, as well as anywhere else this might happen! Summary Debugging asynchronous code, especially in frameworks like ASP.NET Core, can be tricky due to the potential for exceptions to be thrown across asynchronous boundaries. Now, the Visual Studio Debugger will automatically break when an async Task method throw...
Supercharge C++ Debugging with AI-Generated breakpoint expressions
Have you ever spent hours debugging your C++ code, struggling to set up the right conditional breakpoint or tracepoint? Or wished for a smarter way to obtain detailed runtime information without manually crafting complex expressions? You're in luck! With Visual Studio 2022, the latest GitHub Copilot feature now offers AI-generated expressions for both conditional breakpoints and tracepoints, available from C# 17.10 and now extended to C++. With these AI-generated conditional breakpoints and tracepoints, you can now automate the creation of intelligent expressions tailored to your specific debugging needs, signifi...
Easily dock and float tool windows
You’re in the middle of a debugging session, attempting to chase down that one issue that is causing you trouble. In the heat of the moment, you grab a tool window and drag it out of its docked position – purely by accident. You didn’t mean to drag it, but sometimes when you move the mouse around, things like that happen. Your full attention now shifts from debugging to trying to get the tool window back to where it was. Sounds familiar? Here’s something that will help. There is a little-known feature that will move a tool window between its last known docked location and last known floating location. H...
Incorporate GitHub Copilot into your daily flow
Streamlining Workflow with GitHub Copilot Have you ever received code completions that are too large to manage or ones that need slight tweaks, but you must accept all the code to make those changes? To address these pain points, in Visual Studio 17.11 we’ve introduced a new feature that allows you to refine your completions by adding extra context or asking clarifying questions. Now, you can move directly into Inline Chat and view the suggested code in a more accessible way, without having to accept and modify everything in the editor. Refining GitHub Copilot Completions with Inline Chat You now have mor...
Enhancing your Visual Studio authentication experience
The current cyber security climate demands that applications not only provide outstanding features but also prioritize the security of user data. Applications like Visual Studio rely on token-based authentication to access resources on your behalf. While effective, token-based authentication can be susceptible to attacks if not properly protected. Today, we are happy to announce that starting with the Visual Studio 17.11 update, we are helping better protect your credentials by making the Windows authentication broker, also known as WAM (Web Account Manager), the default authentication method for Visual Studio 20...
New GitHub Copilot features in Visual Studio 2022 17.11
Visual Studio 2022 17.11 now brings exciting advancements from GitHub Copilot! This release significantly improves how GitHub Copilot integrates into your development workflow, offering smarter and more intuitive coding assistance. Discover the new GitHub Copilot features in Visual Studio, such as enhanced context understanding, improved code completions, and AI insights for debugging and naming. These updates aim to boost your productivity and efficiency in coding. To try these new features, download the update, make sure to activate your GitHub Copilot account and check out the release notes for more detaile...
C++ Gaming Productivity Update for Visual Studio 2022 version 17.11
Introduction In Visual Studio 2022 version 17.11, you will find brand new productivity enhancements for your game development workflows. From faster conditional breakpoints to a swath of Unreal Engine enhancements, we have added various productivity boosters based on your feedback. Once again, thank you for sharing Developer Community feedback and answering our surveys. Your valuable feedback continues to drive the direction of the Visual Studio gaming team. General C++ Game Development Supercharge Your IntelliSense Performance We have received feedback from AAA developers about IntelliSense performance. Whil...
New IDE features in Visual Studio v17.11
In Visual Studio 2022 v17.11, you'll discover several new features that address specific issues developers have reported. These updates don't belong to a distinct category, but we're dedicated to sharing them with you in this blog post. You can download the update and view the comprehensive release notes for full details. Find the code you're looking for Do you ever feel like you're seeing too many results in code search? Narrow down your focus with the newly added scoping options in Code Search. For the default code search experience and each filter, you can now set the scope to Entire solution, Current...
Enhancing Code Comprehension: GitHub Copilot’s Features in Visual Studio 2022 17.11
GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2022 17.11 now offers an improved experience you to refer to their methods, classes, functions, and entire solution directly within the chat. By using the # symbol followed by the name of a method, class, or function, or by referring to your solution with @workspace, you can provide specific context that helps GitHub Copilot better understand their code and the problem at hand. Refer to your solution GitHub Copilot Chat now allows you to refer to your entire solution. This feature helps provide an even deeper understanding of your solution to get the best results. To refer to you...
New C++ features in Visual Studio v17.11
Visual Studio 2022 version 17.11 is here and comes with a host of new features for C++ developers. We’ve made improvements across our toolchain, Unreal Engine support, Build Insights, CMake debugger, and more. This post gives a quick overview of what’s available; for all the details, see What's New for C++ Developers in Visual Studio 2022 17.11 on the C++ blog. Standard Library The three main areas of improvement in this release are in formatted output, vectorization, and diagnostics. For formatted output, we’ve implemented parts of Formatting Ranges and all of Printing Blank Lines with println. Our vectorizati...
New debugging and diagnostic features
Debugging and diagnostics are vital skills for any developer, but they can also be difficult and time-consuming to get proficient . That's why we've added some fantastic new features and enhancements to Visual Studio 2022 v17.11 that will help you find and resolve bugs faster and easier than ever before. Here are some of the highlights. Download this update and see the release notes for all the details. Debugging Break on async method exceptions Debugging asynchronous code, especially in frameworks like ASP.NET, can be tricky due to the potential for exceptions to be thrown across asynchronous boundaries. ...
New git tooling features
Visual Studio 2022 v17.11 includes fantastic updates to everyone working with Git. They bring the richness of both GitHub and Azure DevOps into Visual Studio and part of your natural workflow. This greatly simplifies your inner loop, making you even more productive than before. Download this update and see the release notes for all the details. More meaningful code reviews We've made it easier to view your GitHub and Azure DevOps pull request comments directly in your working file in Visual Studio. You can now stay in your context, make necessary code changes, and interact with your colleagues' suggestions ...
Copilot Content Exclusion Now Available in Visual Studio 2022 17.11
We are excited to announce that Copilot Content Exclusion is now available in Visual Studio 2022 17.11. This feature allows your admins to configure Copilot to ignore certain files in a repository or organization, giving you enterprise control that ensures sensitive information is protected while seamlessly integrating trusted AI for efficient coding. This will now be available for Completions, Inline, Chat, for GitHub Copilot for Business and GitHub Copilot for Enterprise customers. Content Exclusion is not limited to repos hosted on GitHub but also available for repositories hosted on other platforms, such a...
First preview of Visual Studio 2022 v17.12 with .NET 9
We’re excited to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2022 v17.12 Preview 1 – the first preview of our next update to Visual Studio. This update focuses on providing fantastic developer experiences for working with .NET 9 projects and new AI productivity features, along with continues improvements all-around. Download the preview and see the full list of enhancements in the release notes. .NET 9 + Aspire .NET 9 elevates cloud-native and intelligent app development, focusing on productivity enhancements, streamlined deployments, and accelerated AI integration, ensuring superior performance for develope...
Visual Studio 2022 v17.11 – Your feedback in action
We are thrilled to announce the General Availability (GA) of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.11. This release is a testament to our commitment to listening to you, our developer community. Every enhancement, every fix, and every new feature in this release has been shaped by your feedback. Whether you're building web, desktop, cloud, or gaming applications, Visual Studio 2022 v17.11 is designed to make your development experience smoother, faster, and more intuitive. We heard you - loud and clear. From the most upvoted issues on our Developer Community Forum to the suggestions that came through in our feedba...
My Summer Experience as a SWE Intern at Microsoft
Hi everyone! I’m Serena, a rising 4th year at Rochester Institute of Technology with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Psychology. This summer I was a returning intern at Microsoft as a software engineering intern with the JavaScript and TypeScript Tooling team. In this blog post, I will be covering what it was like to work on language tooling and my overall experience as an intern at Microsoft. What I Worked On Over the summer, I worked on a toggle feature for inlay hints (that is additional information about source code that is rendered inline) in Visual Studio. The inlay hint feature supports mu...
Introducing the revamped Attach to Process experience
One of the most powerful and frequently used features of Visual Studio is the Attach to Process dialog, which enables you to debug processes running on your machine or on a remote machine. For anything you could develop using Visual Studio, the Attach to Process dialog allows you to quickly attach the debugger to the processes you want to inspect and troubleshoot. While this feature has been around for a long time, its current design has room for modernization to better fit the latest versions of Visual Studio. Thus, we used this opportunity to improve the Attach to Process experience introducing a revamped and r...
Sign VSIX packages with Sign CLI
You can now leverage Sign CLI for a more secure, modern way to sign your Visual Studio extensions. Signing your VSIX packages improves security, prevents tampering, and builds trust with your users. This integration makes it easier and more convenient to sign your packages than ever before! Sign CLI replaces the older VSIXSignTool with a modern, general purpose sign tool that’s actively maintained and kept up to date with the latest security standards. It supports cloud and local signing from a variety of sources and can also fit seamlessly into your CI pipeline for easy integration. Continue reading to le...
Visual Studio tip: Using Ctrl-L to delete a line with and without Clipboard backup
Here is one Visual Studio tip from my colleague Gwyn Peña-Siguenza which I didn't know about! Yes, even after 26 years using this fantastic tool, I am still discovering new features. So thanks to Gwyn for this!! This is all about deleting lines, and using the Windows Clipboard for support. You can see the short video on our YouTube channel, and there is also a longer video with 20 must-know shortcuts here. Don't forget to subscribe if you want to learn more tips! Using the Clipboard History in Windows One of my favorite tools on Windows is the Clipboard History. This feature was introduced in Windo...
Three New Premium Visual Studio Subscriber Benefits Announced
A Visual Studio Subscription, whether Professional or Enterprise, delivers far more than just software usage rights; it's a comprehensive toolkit designed to significantly boost your development capabilities and career growth. These subscriptions can save you thousands each year, offering everything from monthly Azure credits for cloud experimentation to complimentary access to premium training platforms like Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning. You will also benefit from discounted rates on Azure Dev/Test pricing and significant savings at professional events like Visual Studio LIVE! Before we explore the detai...
Making Visual Studio a bit more visual
Any web, desktop, or mobile developer works with images often. You reference them from C#, HTML, XAML, CSS, C++, VB, TypeScript, and even in code comments. Some images are local, and some exist online or on network shares, while others only exist as base64 encoded strings. We refer to them in numerous ways in code, but always as string values that don’t show us what the image looks like. Until now. The feature request An option to preview images when they are hovered has gotten a lot of attention lately, so we decided to look into it. Various image previewers exist for different editors already, but they a...
Get Hands-On with Visual Studio and Azure: Live at Microsoft HQ this August!
Visual Studio LIVE! Microsoft HQ 2024 August 5-9 | Microsoft Conference Center, Redmond, WA There’s still time to register, join us, get your questions answered, and bring back a wealth of knowledge and excitement to your teams! We’re close to selling out for next month’s conference, which will be packed with valuable sessions and activities, hosted on campus at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, WA. Visual Studio LIVE! 2024 is not just another conference; it’s a celebration of innovation, learning, and community. Here are some key highlights and reasons why you should attend: Discover the Latest I...
Demystify history with GitHub Copilot commit explanations
Have you ever struggled to understand what a commit was doing or why it was made? Do you wish you had more clarity and context when reviewing or collaborating on code changes? If you answered yes, then you'll love what GitHub Copilot can do for you: generate commit explanations. GitHub Copilot can analyze your code differences and produce concise summaries that highlight the key points. No more guessing or wasting time on deciphering your Git history. You can focus on coding and collaborating with ease. And the best part is, you can also improve your communication and teamwork by having better documentation and t...
Dive into native Windows development with new WinUI workload and template improvements
At //Build 2024, the WinUI team announced a renewed focus on WinUI as one of the premier app development frameworks we recommend for native Windows app development. To make it as seamless and easy as possible to get into coding, we created a new Windows Dev Center page, streamlined our Getting Started with WinUI documentation, and partnered with Visual Studio to improve the developer experience with workloads and templates. Today, we’ll focus on showing you the great new changes in Visual Studio along with a little bit of our thought process behind them and links to learn more! Getting started with the new w...
Let GitHub Copilot draft your pull request description
Writing good pull request descriptions is essential for effective code reviews and collaboration. But it’s time-consuming and tedious, especially when you have multiple commits or complex changes. That's why we’re highlighting a feature that will make your life better with the help of GitHub Copilot: generated pull request descriptions. GitHub Copilot examines your code changes and generates helpful summaries that you can edit and customize. Save your energy for your coding tasks and let GitHub Copilot provide extra context for your reviewers. Starting with Visual Studio version 17.10 GA, to try these ...
Code Assessment with .NET Upgrade Assistant
We are thrilled to announce the latest enhancements to the .NET Upgrade Assistant. .NET Upgrade Assistant helps upgrade solutions to newer versions of .NET. Whether you’re upgrading from .NET Framework to .NET 8 or just between .NET Core versions (from .NET 6 or 7 to .NET 8 or 9), .NET Upgrade Assistant can help you understand what changes will be needed. .NET Upgrade Assistant is available as a Visual Studio extension or as a command-line tool. Now as part of your upgrades to modern .NET, you’ll have access to powerful code assessment features. Here’s what’s new: Our code assessment tool scans your solut...
Keep Visual Studio automatically updated and secure through Microsoft Update
Visual Studio is coming to Microsoft Update! We’re pleased to announce that starting in August 2024, users of the Visual Studio Community edition who are not part of an organization managed by an IT administrator can choose to receive monthly Visual Studio security updates through the Microsoft Update (MU) system on "patch Tuesdays". This new update option will be available for Visual Studio 2022, Visual Studio 2019, and Visual Studio 2017. It won’t be available for the Preview channel. How to enable Visual Studio updates through MU Open Windows Settings and go to Windows Update > Advanced Options. If you c...
Easily navigate code delegates while debugging
Delegates are everywhere in modern code; a delegate is a type that represents references to methods with a particular parameter list and return type. Developers use delegates to pass methods as arguments to other methods. One example you may be familiar with is with event handlers. Handlers are methods you can invoke through delegates. Delegates remind me of C++ function pointers, but of course delegates are fully object-oriented. There are a few ways to represent delegates, there is, for example, Func delegate. This generic delegate represents a method that takes one or more parameters and returns a value of a ...
Bosch widely adopts Visual Studio for their C++ remote Linux projects
The Bosch security camera team was seeking a unified development setup for their team and recently re-evaluated Visual Studio as a solution for their C++ projects and remote Linux development needs. Their experience with Visual Studio 2022 featured notable improvements relevant to their workflows such as seamless GDB and CMake/WSL integrations ...
Catch up on the latest Git tooling features in 17.10 GA
We believe that boosting the productivity of your development and team collaboration helps you produce better software solutions. That’s why the Visual Studio Version Control team has delivered new features, streamlining your inner loop and code review experiences. You’ll get AI support writing commit messages, pull request descriptions, commit explanations, and a better pull request creation experience. Download the latest Visual Studio release to try them out and let us know what you think! Write less, code more with GitHub Copilot Starting with Visual Studio version 17.10 GA, to try out generated pull...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.10 Performance Enhancements
We are excited to announce the latest update of Visual Studio 2022, which brings you a range of performance enhancements across various areas of the IDE. In this blog post, we will highlight some of the most notable improvements that you can experience in version 17.10, such as faster Windows Forms designer loading, faster Razor colorization, quicker solution loading, and reduced DLL overhead. Windows Forms designer loading speed We heard from developers and partners that Windows Forms designer in projects targeting .NET Core 3.1 and up can be slow in loading up. In those scenarios the designer is loade...
Giving our Azure marketplace images a makeover
We previously announced the addition of new, optimized Azure VM image offers to help you create and test your applications faster and more easily on Azure VMs and the Microsoft Dev Box service. As we continue to evolve and optimize our offers, we're introducing more developer-optimized VM images and deprecating our older non-optimized offers. In this blog post, we’ll provide details and timelines for the additions and depreciations that will take place over the next couple of months. Boost your productivity with new Azure marketplace images We're committed to giving you the best, most productive starting po...
Get Hands-On with Visual Studio and Azure: Live at Microsoft HQ this August!
Visual Studio LIVE! Microsoft HQ 2024 August 5-9 | Microsoft Conference Center, Redmond, WA Join the Ultimate Developer Celebration! Who's ready to connect with fellow developers and Visual Studio Product Managers this August at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond? Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ celebrates the bright days of the Pacific Northwest—offering the perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in everything Visual Studio, Azure, GitHub, and the marvels of GitHub Copilot. This isn't just a conference; it's a celebration of innovation, learning, and community! With 35 speakers, including 20 from Microsoft, ...
Introducing the Revamped Visual Studio Resource Explorer
With the recent revamp of Visual Studio’s Resource Explorer, developers are in for a treat! We’re thrilled to unveil the reimagined Visual Studio Resource Explorer, and trust us, it’s a game-changer. Developers who manage resources in Visual Studio will be delighted to learn that we have finally updated our out-of-the-box resource management experience to better accommodate the needs of the modern .NET developer. This update will make it easier and faster for developers to manage resources in their .NET applications. Here’s the lowdown: The Pain Points We Crushed: Let’s rewind. The old Resource Edi...
A modern Extension Manager has arrived with Visual Studio 17.10
We’re bringing our updated Extension Manager to all users! Over the last year, we’ve made our updated Extension Manager available as an optional preview feature and have been asking you to let us know what you think. Based on your incredible feedback, we’re now ready to offer the new Extension Manager as an on-by-default preview feature starting with Visual Studio 17.10. We’ve streamlined the essential features into a modern UI to help you discover great new extensions and manage your installed extensions. With this release, we still want to hear from you! As you use the Extension Manager in this last preview...
VisualStudio.Extensibility 17.10: Debug your extensions with the Diagnostics Explorer
Imagine creating extensions that run faster and smoother than ever before! If you haven't been following along lately, we've been working on improving the VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK. VisualStudio.Extensibility helps you build extensions that run outside the main IDE process for improved performance and reliability. With it comes a sleek and intuitive .NET 8-based API and comprehensive, well-maintained documentation to help you develop awesome extensions. This 17.10 release builds on our previous releases, and it brings with it a brand-new debugging experience to make it easier for you to get your extension...
Developing cloud-native apps with .NET Aspire and Visual Studio
We're excited to introduce the general availability of .NET Aspire, a comprehensive stack aimed at simplifying the way .NET cloud-native apps are built and managed. .NET Aspire offers developers like you an improved, opinionated framework for constructing distributed applications, ensuring a seamless and consistent development experience. This new stack brings together a collection of tools, patterns, and special NuGet packages known as .NET Aspire Components designed specifically for the orchestration, component integration, and tooling required in modern cloud-native development. Whether you are on day-zero or...
First preview of Visual Studio 2022 v17.11
We are excited to announce the release of Visual Studio 2022 v17.11 Preview 1, the first preview of our next update for Visual Studio 2022. This preview focuses on quality-of-life improvements for all developers and workloads. See the release notes for full list of features. When you use Visual Studio, you want to feel empowered and productive. That's why quality-of-life features are so important: they make coding a smooth and enjoyable experience, free of unnecessary hassles and headaches. You’ll also find hundreds of user-reported bugs and issues fixed and lots of tweaks to existing features. All of i...
Maximizing joy and minimizing toil with great developer experiences
The future always starts with developers. They determine the speed of innovation, and never has that been more true than today, in the era of Generative AI. We’re already seeing GenAI have a profound impact on the way that we build applications and collaborate with our colleagues. More developers will be empowered to create with technology by having access to a coach to guide you through each stage of your learning journey. And user expectations are evolving quickly so that today’s end-users expect their apps already know about their context and history, and even anticipate their next step. There’s a lot of ch...
Visual Studio 2022 17.10 and GitHub Copilot: Your Coding Partner for Faster and Smarter Development
Today, as we kick off the //BUILD 2024 conference, we're thrilled to share the general availability of Visual Studio 2022 17.10! This release features a new, single GitHub Copilot extension, marking a significant leap forward in AI-assisted development by embedding the power of advanced AI directly into strategic parts of your Integrated Development Environment (IDE). With the integration of GitHub Copilot directly into Visual Studio, we’re offering you a coding partner with improved context, providing smart suggestions and code completions that help you stay focused and productive. While GitHub Copilot is impl...
Improve your code quality with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio
In our previous post, we discussed GitHub Copilot’s Slash Commands, which allow you to trigger specific actions within Visual Studio with simple text-based inputs. Now, let's explore the command and its potential to improve code quality in Visual Studio. Refactoring with /optimize In a recent exploration by Bruno Capuano, we see the transformative capabilities of GitHub Copilot's command. Bruno demonstrates its prowess by refactoring a code snippet, showcasing how simple text-based inputs can yield significant improvements in code structure and performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rvM33NjIDI On...
Get Ready for Visual Studio at Build 2024: Join Thousands Online!
MICROSOFT BUILD 2024 Watch it Live! or On-Demand – Starting Next Tuesday! Next week, from May 21st, I’ll be diving into Microsoft Build 2024, and I invite you to come along for the ride—virtually! We’ll explore cutting-edge developments in Visual Studio, Azure, and AI development from wherever we are, no travel required. It’s your chance to join live discussions and connect with tech enthusiasts from around the world, all from your home or office. This year, I’m particularly excited about charting new paths with AI and copilots. Whether you're looking to boost your efficiency, secure your projects, or simply...
Mastering Slash Commands with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio
GitHub Copilot, the AI-powered coding assistant, revolutionizes coding in Visual Studio with its advanced features. In this series, we delve into the efficiency and convenience offered by Slash Commands, elevating your coding workflow. Introducing Slash Commands Slash Commands are predefined actions within GitHub Copilot, accessible through the prompt interface. Bruno Capuano, in his latest video, elucidates these commands, accessible via the Slash button in the Copilot Chat window or by typing a forward slash in the message box. Alternatively, you can also access the Slash Commands by typing a forward s...
Using GitHub Copilot as your Coding GPS
In this series, we delve into GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio, showcasing how it aids coding. GitHub Copilot functions as a coding GPS, guiding you through software development in Visual Studio. In our new short video, Bruno Capuano shows how this smart coding assistant boosts coding efficiency and quality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq8JNPgajAU&embeds_widget_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcommunity.microsoft.com%2F&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.embedly.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.embedly.com&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&feature=emb_title GitHub Copilot: an assist...
Free Pure Virtual C++ 2024 Conference
Pure Virtual C++ is our free one-day virtual conference for the whole C++ community. This year it will run on April 30th 15:00 UTC. Sign-up for free to get access to our five sessions on the day and a host of pre-conference content which will roll out in the two weeks leading up to the conference. The sessions are: Automated Testing of Shader Code with Keith Stockdale (Rare) Rare has a rich culture of writing automated tests for their game and engine code. The ‘Sea of Thieves’ project has hundreds of thousands of automated tests that exist to validate behavior and to ensure that bugs are kept to a minimu...
How to use GitHub Copilot Chat in Visual Studio
In this series, we will explore the capabilities and how to use GitHub Copilot Chat within Visual Studio, demonstrating how it can elevate your coding efficiency. GitHub Copilot serves as an AI-powered coding assistant designed to enhance your coding experience across various development environments. Exploring code with GitHub Copilot Chat In our latest video, my colleague Bruno Capuano showcases the utility of GitHub Copilot Chat within Visual Studio, specifically focusing on populating arrays with random numbers. While arrays are a fundamental data structure, GitHub Copilot Chat facilitates exploration beyon...
Introducing the new Copilot experience in Visual Studio
GitHub Copilot your AI-powered coding companion is now seamlessly woven into your Visual Studio IDE, enhancing your everyday tasks and bringing you the latest AI-driven coding experiences. Copilot is designed to elevate your efficiency, by offering personalized code suggestions, crafting your git commit messages, answering coding-related queries, and much more. We’re thrilled to introduce the new, unified Copilot experience in Visual Studio 17.10, now available in Preview 3 (General availability in May). This combines the features of Copilot and Copilot Chat into one convenient package. Eliminating the need to...
How to use Comments to Prompt GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio
A step-by-step guide to use comments as prompts in GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio. GitHub Copilot is a programming assistant that uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to help you increase efficiency in your daily programming tasks. ...
How to Install GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio
A step-by-step guide to enable the AI-powered coding assistant within Visual Studio Introduction to GitHub Copilot. GitHub Copilot is a new tool that helps you write code faster and smarter with the help of artificial intelligence. It can suggest code completions, generate code snippets, and even write entire functions for you. ...
In 4 Weeks: Visual Studio LIVE! Chicago 2024
Visual Studio LIVE! Chicago 2024 April 29 - May 3 | Swissôtel, Chicago Join us for Visual Studio LIVE! Chicago for a focused, deep dive into the latest .NET Microsoft Platform developments. You pick the package you want, 3, 4 or all 5 days! This year, we're at the Swissôtel Chicago, with sessions covering Microsoft Visual Studio 2022, .NET 8, Azure, DevOps, Generative AI (GitHub Copilot and more), MAUI, JavaScript, TypeScript, Blazor, modern data processing, and more. Why Attend? Special Offer for Blog Readers: Use the priority code “MSCHI” to receive a $900 disco...
A new MSBuild editing experience
MSBuild is a fundamental part of the .NET development experience, but it can be challenging to new and experienced developers alike. To help developers better understand their project files and access advanced functionality that requires editing the project file directly, we’re releasing an experimental MSBuild editor that has a much richer understanding of MSBuild files than the current XML schema allows. Based on feedback, we hope to make it available by default to all .NET developers. If you work with MSBuild files at all, please try it and let us know how it goes. Who is this for? Although Visual Studio pro...
See Your Pull Request Comments with the Latest Preview
We just shipped preview support for viewing your GitHub and Azure DevOps pull request comments directly in your working file in Visual Studio in 17.10 Preview 2. As one of the most highly requested Git tooling feature suggestions on Developer Community, we need your help to make sure we're on the right track! Download the Latest Visual Studio Preview and let us know what you think! Get Started with Pull Request Comments Request for Your Feedback This preview release is just the first step towards all the suggestions in the Developer Community ticket, and we need your feedb...
Announcing SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for ARM64 Architecture in Visual Studio 17.10 Preview 2
We are thrilled to announce the launch of SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for Visual Studio in ARM64. This enhancement comes with the exciting release version 17.10 Preview 2. Release of SSDT for Visual Studio on arm64 adds SQL development to the capabilities of Visual Studio on arm64. This latest development brings a host of features tailored to enhance your database development experience on ARM64 devices. Key Features: Feature List Steps for Installing SSDT in VS for ARM64 Conclusion With the launch of ...
Visual Studio and GitHub Copilot at GDC 2024
Join us on Wednesday, March 20th, 2024, at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco for a special session on using Visual Studio and GitHub Copilot. In this session, you will learn how to leverage these tools to increase your productivity and modernize your game development workflow.
GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio: A Recap of 2023
In the rapidly evolving world of software development, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. The introduction of AI in Visual Studio, particularly GitHub Copilot, has revolutionized the way developers code. With Copilot integrated into Visual Studio, you can leverage AI to streamline your workflows, manage large codebases, analyze exceptions, and even generate commit messages. It’s like having a knowledgeable pair programmer right beside you, helping you to be more productive, iterate quicker, and make your applications more reliable. Here are a few GitHub Copilot innovations in Visual Studio that we want to hig...
Introducing Visual Studio 17.10 – Preview 2 is Here!
We hope you all enjoyed the new and updated features that came with our first preview of Visual Studio 17.10, and now we have even more to share! This release brings additional tools to help you improve your code reviews with Copilot, diagnostics improvements, as well as additional Extensibility and WinForms enhancements. Browse this list of updates and let us know which of these enhancements is your favorite: To explore the full list of improvements, you can read the Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 2 Release Notes, and we always appreciate your feedback through Developer Community: report any bugs or prob...
Visual Studio 2022 Version 17.9: A Comprehensive Update for C++ Developers
Visual Studio 2022 version 17.9 introduces a host of new features and improvements for C++ developers. Now, you can use the Memory Layout feature to visualize the memory layout of your classes, structs, and unions directly in the editor. Additionally, the #include Diagnostics feature provides insights into the frequency of element usage from an included file, as well as the impact of each #include directive on the build time of the file you’re currently editing. This information is conveniently displayed within your editor for easy reference. For Unreal Engine developers, the consistency and accuracy of Inte...
Visual Studio Subscriptions – A Product Manager’s Journey
I stared at my Visual Studio Subscriptions portal with a somewhat blank distance in my eyes as a feeling of inadequacy spread like the misty rains I’ve experienced in the Pacific Northwest. If you haven't been here, they are the kind that slowly permeate clothes with the intent of educating one on the difference between waterproof and water resistant. In this moment, I slowly understood I was portal resistant. I was new to the Visual Studio Subscriptions team, so I was going to have to become very familiar with the headings and tiles in front of me. This was my product, and I was going to be the voice of t...
Code coverage features in Visual Studio Enterprise
By using code coverage, you can find out where your testing needs improvement and make your software more robust and dependable. In this post, we will introduce the new features that we introduced to the Code Coverage Results window in Visual Studio Enterprise 2022. These features are: These features are not available in Professional or Community editions of Visual Studio. Support of additional report formats We now support additional formats for coverage reports. The formats that are supported are as follows: A coverage report can also be changed to other formats t...
WinForms Designer Selection for 32-bit .NET Framework Projects
Visual Studio 2022’s transition to a 64-bit architecture, driven by customer feedback across the full range of Visual Studio developers, marked a pivotal step towards enhancing the development experience. As Klaus Loffelmann describes in his blog post, this transition enhances overall performance and responsiveness, particularly when working with resource-intensive tasks and large codebases. However, this evolution brings with it a notable challenge for some .NET Framework projects using the Windows Forms designer in Visual Studio 2022. The challenge lies in the inability to design Forms in .NET Framework pro...
Visual Studio’s Full Year in Review (2023)
In 2023, we added many new features, fixes, and improvements to Visual Studio 2022 to make your coding experience more productive, enjoyable, and accessible. This blog post looks back at all the notable enhancements that shipped in 2023 for Visual Studio 2022. Here are the recaps for the year: For more details, you can check out the links to the original blog posts and the Developer Community suggestions that inspired these features. Thank you for being a part of the Visual Studio family! All of these features and more are now available on the recently released ...
A Year of C++ Game Development Improvements in Visual Studio
Game development is evolving rapidly and keeping up with the latest trends is crucial. I’m thrilled that David Li took the time to highlight all the improvements added to Visual Studio for game developers during 2023. Check out his blog here. The Unreal Engine integrations are where my eyes jumped to first. There is now an Unreal Engine log viewer, macro auto-formatter, naming convention checker, blueprint reference and asset inspector, test adaptor, and more, directly in Visual Studio. There is also an exciting image watch extension for UE projects that helps you view in-memory bitmaps while debugging C++ co...
Using Copilot Chat with C++ in Visual Studio: Generate code, fix functions, and more..
GitHub Copilot Chat is now available in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code for users with an active subscription. Copilot Chat is an AI pair-programmer that allows you to speak in natural language through the chat interface to accomplish programming tasks such as understanding sections of code, generating test cases, and generating code. We have just published a blog post that focuses on tips for using Copilot Chat functionality in Visual Studio with your C++ code. You can read more details as we walk through an example C++ repo here in our C++ team blog post. Download GitHub Copilot Chat To learn...
A Streamlined Extension Manager comes to Visual Studio 17.9
Over the last year, we’ve been building a better Extension Manager for Visual Studio that makes it easier for you to find and install great extensions. Along the way, we’ve invited Visual Studio Preview users to try out the new design and share their feedback with us. Using all that amazing feedback, we added features, made improvements, and fixed bugs. With the official release of Visual Studio 17.9, we’re ready to make the new Extension Manager available to everyone as a preview feature! The new Extension Manager design This design is all about maximizing space for the content you care about w...
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...
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 ...
A year of making you more productive using Git in Visual Studio
As we reflect on the past year, it’s clear that the journey of enhancing our Git tooling has been exciting! Our team has been dedicated to increasing GitHub integration, boosting productivity, and addressing valuable feedback from Developer Community. Today, we’re thrilled to share the milestones we’ve achieved and the enhancements that are making your Git experience in Visual Studio smoother and more intuitive. We hope this post can summarize the updates over the past year, and help you find and try out any updates you may have missed. More GitHub Integration Because we can partner closely with GitHub, we’re h...
Size, Alignment, and Memory Layout Insights for C++ Classes, Structs, and Unions
In Visual Studio 2022 version 17.8, we introduced a feature that allows C++ developers to easily view the size and alignment of classes, structs, unions, base types, or Enums. Furthermore, in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.9 Preview 1, we're taking it a step further by providing the capability to visualize the memory layout of your C++ classes, structs, and unions. Thanks to your feedback, you can now use these features to gain a better understanding of how data is organized and accessed in your programs. Size and Alignment Visualizing size and alignment provides C++ developers with powerful insights ...
Naming Made Easy: AI-Powered Rename Suggestions
Ever struggled to name a variable, method, or class—finding that perfect balance between expressiveness and conciseness? You're not alone. We've tackled this universal challenge in the latest Visual Studio Preview via our GitHub Copilot Chat extension (subscription required). Introducing: AI-powered rename suggestions. This feature doesn't just suggest names; it learns how your identifier is used and your code style to propose identifiers that seamlessly fit into your codebase. It's like having a dedicated naming expert by your side, enhancing your code while keeping you in the coding flow. The Power of AI in...
Unlocking the Secrets of Managed Memory: Dive into Event Handler Leak Insights!
Event handler leaks have been around for a long time, and they are one of the peskiest issues WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) developers regularly deal with. You might be thinking: What makes event handler leaks so important? Event handler leaks are easy to cause, all it takes is to forget to unsubscribe to an event. Additionally, they are quite difficult to spot and even trickier to fix. The new insight added to the Visual Studio Managed Memory Usage Tool introduced in update 17.9 Preview 1 significantly trivializes the process of spotting/fixing these leaks. It provides information on which objects are...
Visual Studio 17.9 Preview 2 has arrived!
Welcome to the release of Visual Studio 2022 17.9 Preview 2, which wraps up our development efforts for 2023. This update brings new features and enhancements, building on the solid foundation set by Preview 1 in November. In this preview, we've made some improvements to the C++ and .NET MAUI development experiences. You'll find the '#include Diagnostics' for C++ more robust and the 'Live Property Explorer' for .NET MAUI now available, making your coding more intuitive and efficient, along with other new features. These updates reflect our commitment to continuously improving Visual Studio in response to ...
Embracing SQL Server 2022 with SSDT 17.8: Unveiling Key Updates
In the dynamic landscape of database development, SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is a powerful tool for database developers in the Visual Studio ecosystem. SSDT 17.8 is included in the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 v17.8, which was released on November 14th, 2023. This version introduces crucial enhancements and fixes, underscoring Microsoft's commitment to refining the developer experience. In conclusion, SSDT 17.8 emerges as a notable release and fortifies the tool's capabilities. From connectivity advancements to accessibility improvements and performance optimizations, this rel...
Scroll to expand document tabs
When you have lots of tabs open in Visual Studio, your horizontal screen resolution determines how many fit in the document tab well. The remaining document tabs are hidden unless you configure Visual Studio to display tabs in multiple rows. Alternatively, you could switch your tab layout to vertical tabs instead of the default horizontal layout. Vertical tabs, of course, isn’t the answer for everyone, and it’s not what we’re going to talk about in today’s blog post! Going back to multiple tab rows - enabling this feature and having multiple rows of tabs open will have an impact on your available coding space....
My favorite features in Visual Studio 17.8
It was a busy week for the Visual Studio team, preparing for both Ignite and .NET Conf. And releasing the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 which is now up to version 17.8. There were lots of announcements of cool new features, AI enhancements, performance improvements, and much more. That was a lot to digest, so I thought I’d bring attention to some of my favorites. Case-preserving find and replace When you do a replacement, you can now preserve the original casing of each match in your code. Note that to get Pascal case and Camel case, your replacement string must also be in Pascal case or Camel case. T...
Write Your Git Commits with GitHub Copilot
After spending hours on a bug fix or a feature update, often the last thing we developers want to do is carefully explain the contents of the Git commit. The latest Visual Studio preview is here to help. Use the new generated Git commit message feature to help you describe your set of changes. You can then refine the message with "why" the change was made and commit. Generating useful and informative commit messages helps you in a variety of ways. To try it out, download the latest Visual Studio preview and update the GitHub Copilot Chat Extension. You’ll also need an...
Community Feedback Building 17.8 & 17.9 Preview 1
The Visual Studio team depends on community feedback from all users to help create, design, and improve Visual Studio. We’re thrilled to announce that Visual Studio version 17.8 (available here today) utilized more than 360 feedback items from Developer Community. We are currently working hard to build the next version of Visual Studio and just released 17.9 Preview 1, where we are actively looking for feedback. Below dives deeper into what community suggestions made it into the latest releases of Visual Studio, how you can start using these new features, and where to give feedback. If you haven’t given feedba...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.8 Performance Enhancements
Version 17.8 welcomes an array of exhilarating performance enhancements, including Improved Razor/Blazor Responsiveness, Enhanced F5 Speed, Optimized IntelliSense for C++ Unreal Engine and Build Acceleration for Non-SDK style .NET Projects. At the heart of these changes is our commitment to enhancing performance, providing an ideal platform for a coding experience that is not only seamless but also highly productive. Embrace these improvements for a more efficient coding journey. Get ready for an exciting experience! Improved Razor/Blazor Responsiveness Solutions using Razor and Blazor will expe...
Visual Studio 2022 v17.8 Brings Increased Productivity, Further Unreal Engine Integration, and Cross-Platform Enhancements to C++
Introducing the latest updates to Visual Studio 2022, designed to make your development experience more productive and efficient than ever before. Our Visual Studio 2022 17.8 release includes powerful C++ productivity features that empowers you to check the size and alignment of classes, make member functions const, and make global functions static. We have also added features that will help you clean up and sort #include for improved code organization. For Unreal Engine developers, you'll appreciate the new Unreal Engine Test Adapter, Unreal Engine snippets, macro specifier suggestions, and view in-memory bitma...
Create a Pull Request with Summary Difference View Available in GA
You can now create a pull request in the 17.8 release of Visual Studio. With over 280 votes and 60 comments in Developer Community, integrating create a pull request has been a highly suggested feature with community involvement to make it happen. We’ve improved on the pull request preview feature released in 17.7 preview 2. You can now leverage the summary difference view, write your description with the Markdown, and add your reviewers. Adding Create a Pull Request to the IDE Pull requests are an essential tool in GitHub, Azure DevOps, and other Git hosting providers for code review. These reviews help ca...
The Visual Studio UI Refresh Preview is here!
Back in May, we showed a first look into the UI Refresh that we've been working on for Visual Studio. We’ve been working on a refresh for the Visual Studio UI to improve productivity, create a more inclusive environment, and keep up with evolving global accessibility requirements. The feedback we've collected from that first post and the developer community ticket has been wonderful. We've been spending the time since then working through all your comments to ensure your valuable feedback gets weaved into the UI Refresh. Now, here at Ignite, we're excited to finally make a version of the UI Refresh available for ...
Introducing Visual Studio 17.9 – Preview 1 is Here!
We're excited to introduce Visual Studio 17.9 Preview 1, another leap forward in our continuous effort to enhance your development experience. This latest iteration is not just an update; it's a transformation, enriched with features that speak directly to your needs for productivity and flexibility. At the heart of this release is a synergy with AI, bringing tools like GitHub Copilot to the forefront. Imagine crafting perfect Git commit messages without a second thought, or seamlessly navigating complex code with advanced IntelliSense support for Unreal Engine projects. We're not just enhancing features;...
Visual Studio 17.8 now available!
Unlock New Heights in Developer Productivity: Optimized C++ Support, Enhanced Enterprise Capabilities, and Full .NET 8 Integration The latest update (17.8) for Visual Studio 2022 is now generally available! Offering a comprehensive suite of enhancements that span productivity, programming languages, and enterprise management, this general release is a monumental step forward. Developed with extensive user feedback, this version is fully compatible with .NET 8, which is also generally available as of today. Let us know your favorite feature! This release is a big deal not just for its extensiv...
Latest Updates for CMake Development in Visual Studio
Visual Studio has native CMake integration that allows C++ users to build and develop using CMake and supports their unique needs. CMake is a cross-platform build tool for C++ and with Visual Studio’s latest tools, users can be more productive when it comes to configuring with CMake. To learn more about Visual Studio’s CMake integration, please see our documentation: CMake projects in Visual Studio | Microsoft Learn. To add to the available tools for your CMake workflows, in the last year, we have delivered a new CMake debugger that allows users to debug their CMakeLists.txt files just like you would any othe...
Microsoft Ignite 2023 is around the corner! (Nov 14-17)
Microsoft Ignite 2023, scheduled for November 14th – 17th, is quickly approaching. As one of the most anticipated developer events of the year, we're pleased to announce that although in-person tickets have been sold out for weeks, we're offering a free online streaming option for those who couldn't secure a spot. However, it's essential to register in advance to ensure access. This year's Ignite will feature the latest announcements on AI/Copilot advancements, comprehensive demos of new features and functionalities, and insights into the trajectory of tech developments. Notably, in addition to presentations ...
Visual Studio Innovations at .NET Conf 2023: Save The Date
We're gearing up for .NET Conf 2023 from November 14th to 16th and are excited to showcase how the latest enhancements in Visual Studio will bolster your .NET development workflow. This free, three-day virtual developer conference, co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft, is an excellent opportunity to delve into new Visual Studio features alongside a global developer community. Power Up with Visual Studio .NET Conf 2023 will also showcase the latest features in Visual Studio, enhancing your .NET experience. Key Features in Action Dive into Live Demos We have key sp...
Designed with your feedback: a better Extension Manager
Earlier this year, we showed you how to try a preview version of our new Extension Manager, which was designed to make it easier for developers like you to find great extensions to boost your productivity and personalize your Visual Studio experience. We invited you to use it and share your thoughts, and you delivered. Thank you for all the feedback! We’ve made updates and fixes based on your feedback to bring you an even better Extension Manager in Visual Studio 17.8 Preview 3. Extension Manager Updates You let us know in your feedback that you appreciate the new UI’s focus on extension details, so we’...
Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 3 is here!
Welcome to Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 3! This release is dedicated to addressing community submitted feedback where we resolved nearly 100 Developer Community tickets. Our primary focus was improving stability and reliability while also introducing a few new features. Productivity Visual Studio Update Notification Noticed something new? For Visual Studio 2022, we added an overlay to the VS task bar icon to help you know when VS will update. When there is an update available and you have enabled the "Update on Close" option, the icon will appear. Once you close VS, an update will immediately ...
How Microsoft Empowers Developers with Disabilities: Celebrating NDEAM
October is National Disability Employee Awareness Month, or NDEAM, a time to celebrate the contributions of workers with disabilities and raise awareness about the value of diverse and inclusive workforces across the globe. At Microsoft, we are committed to empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and that includes ensuring every developer who uses our tools to create amazing products and services. In this post, we want to highlight some of the accessibility features that make Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code (VS Code) a delightful experience for all developers, in...
Now Streaming: The Visual Studio ‘Tea & Technology’ Miniseries
2023 Visual Studio Miniseries: Tea & Technology The Visual Studio team is full of stories and insights, and we knew it was time to share them. So, we picked up our cameras and went on a special tour of Microsoft’s iconic Redmond Campus. Our goal? To offer you a snapshot—an insider's look at just a few of the many people who contribute to shaping Visual Studio every day. Leading us in these select conversations is the seasoned podcaster Richard Campbell from .NET Rocks. With decades of experience mirroring Visual Studio's own history, Richard uses his insightful questioning to bring a level of clarity that...
A unit of profiling makes the allocations go away
In Visual Studio 17.8 Preview 2 we have updated unit test profiling, allowing you to use any of the available tools in the performance profiler – not just the instrumentation tool. With this change, it’s easy to quickly profile small units of work in isolation, make changes, and then remeasure and validate the impact of the change. Assuming you have good test coverage, this is a great way to leverage existing assets to help performance-tune your application. Who moved my cheese? With this new release, we have updated the unit test profiling experience. Previously when selecting profile in the context menu for a...
New React TypeScript SPA Templates and More
We have made the latest React TypeScript SPA Templates available in our latest preview. If you are developing React TypeScript Web application with ASP.NET as backend in Visual Studio, go ahead and try the new template! All the Visual Studio React and Vue templates using the JavaScript SDK are now using Vite, so you would get the benefit of a much faster project creation and run experience. All the features and updates in this blog post are available in our latest version. React TypeScript SPA Templates When we initially released the JavaScript/TypeScript with ASP.NET Combined Templates in this blog ...
IntelliTest simplifies writing and maintaining unit tests
Writing a suite of unit tests that exhaustively exercise and validate the logic of the code is not easy. It can even be considered too expensive to do at all. Fortunately, IntelliTest addresses both concerns: it helps you achieve high code coverage at a fraction of the cost, and now in Preview, this Enterprise feature supports projects that target .NET6 and will run on x64. When you run on your .NET code, it generates test cases by dynamically analyzing the code. For every statement in the code, it crafts an input that will reach that statement, doing a case analysis for every conditional branch—if statements,...
Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 2 has arrived!
We hope everyone enjoyed all the new and updated features that came with our first preview of Visual Studio’s next version, and now we’re back with more! This release brings additional tools to help you improve your productivity, debug your code, as well as some additional C++ and Game Dev enhancements. Browse this comprehensive list of enhancements and let us know which of these enhancements is your favorite: You can delve into the complete list of enhancements by checking out the Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 2 Release Notes, and we always love to know what you think with feedback through Develope...
Balancing User Updates with Security Best Practices
In today’s world, it is imperative for IT administrators and organizations to manage security effectively and embrace security best practices. One common best practice involves implementing appropriate permission levels to ensure that only authorized accounts can access sensitive data and functionality. Another widely accepted best practice involves keeping software up to date with the latest security patches. Visual Studio recommends both of these security best practices as described in the online documentation for User permissions and Visual Studio and Applying Administrator Updates. Up until now, we’ve had ...
Elevating Debugging with Auto-decompilation and External Sources
Visual Studio has been supporting external sources debugging and decompilation for some time now. However, with the release of Visual Studio 17.7, the debugger took a significant leap forward by introducing Auto-decompilation for .NET libraries making the external code debugging in Visual Studio much more streamlined and effortless. Its integrated decompiler, it decompiles external code in real-time and seamlessly incorporates it into the debugger as needed. In this article, we'll investigate the Auto-decompilation feature of Visual Studio, highlighting its significance in debugging and engineering external co...
Keep your casing with Case-preserving Find and Replace
The Visual Studio search experience is getting a new feature that allows users to find and replace text without having to worry about different casings. For example, a method parameter `catalogItemId` and object property `CatalogItemId` have the same name but different capitalization but should both be replaced by something like ‘productId’ with their respective casings. The feature has been requested by users who were looking for an easy way to find and replace text without having to worry about different casings in various forums, including Stack Overflow and Developer Community Case-Preserving Search &...
Visual Studio for Mac Retirement Announcement
Today we are announcing the retirement of the Visual Studio for Mac IDE. Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 will continue to be supported for another 12 months, until August 31st, 2024, with servicing updates for security issues and updated platforms from Apple. While the decision has been made to retire Visual Studio for Mac, we remain committed to our developers on Mac with alternatives like the recently announced C# Dev Kit for VS Code and other extensions that will allow you to take advantage of our ongoing investments in .NET development on a Mac. Developing Across OS Environments Informed by ongoing user feedback...
Learn about new and old VS tools on Visual Studio Toolbox!
Do you like watching videos to learn about new and existing Visual Studio features? Then you should check out the Visual Studio Toolbox show! Available on both Learn and YouTube, Visual Studio Toolbox is a show that helps you become a more productive developer in VS by highlighting tooling within the IDE and the wider Visual Studio family. Most of our guests are Visual Studio team members, giving you expert knowledge on features while also providing an inside look at how the features were developed. The show airs a mix of both prerecorded and live episodes, with the latter letting you ask your VS-related ques...
Working with images just got easier in Visual Studio
Any web, desktop, or mobile developer works with images often. You reference them from C#, HTML, XAML, CSS, C++, TypeScript, and even in code comments. Some images are local, and some exist online or on network shares, while others only exist as base64 encoded strings. We refer to them in numerous ways in code, but always as string values that don’t show us what the image looks like. It would be nice if those image references could show us the images too. The feature request An option to preview images when they are hovered has gotten some attention lately, and we think it sounds like a great idea. If you ...
Safely use secrets in HTTP requests in Visual Studio 2022
In the 17.8 Preview 1 version of Visual Studio 2022 we have updated the HTTP file editor to enable you to externalize variables to make testing your Web APIs across different environments easier. This update also includes support to handle secrets in a secure fashion. To access these new features, you’ll need to install 17.8 Preview 1, or later, which you can do with the link below. In previous releases if you wanted to use a variable in an HTTP file in Visual Studio, the variable would have to be defined directly in the HTTP file itself. This makes it more difficult to test different environments with the...
Simplified Code Refinement and Debugging with GitHub Copilot Chat
This March, we announced GitHub Copilot chat for Visual Studio 2022. With Chat, Copilot has moved beyond code completions, offering in-depth analysis and explanations of how code works. It supports the generation of unit tests, and even helps with proposed fixes to bugs, and explaining exceptions. By gathering useful context data from Visual Studio, Copilot Chat helps you form great questions to get useful answers. Using GitHub Copilot with Visual Studio gives you more time for creativity by spending less time on boilerplate manual tasks and diagnosis. Now, we’ve taken deep integration with Visual Studio a ste...
New in Visual Studio: Compare Files with Solution Explorer
Comparing code in different files is a common need for developers, yet it often disrupts the flow of your work. We've heard your feedback and are excited to introduce a new compare feature in Visual Studio. This feature enables you to compare code files directly within the Solution Explorer, eliminating the need for external tools and keeping you in your developer flow. Effortless Code Comparison with Two Options Recognizing that developers have different scenarios for comparing files, we've introduced two convenient ways to achieve the same goal: effortless code comparison to understand differences. 1. Comp...
Multi-Branch Graph Available for General Audiences
The power of version control comes alive when you can visualize your Git operations with the new multi-branch graph, available in 17.7 GA. In response to your feedback, we’ve delivered an improved graph experience. Track all the branches, commits, and merges that arise in your git workflows by viewing multiple branches at the same time. Leveraging the Multi-branch Graph Visualizing multiple branches empowers you to perform cross branch operations and makes it easy to understand the relationships between branches. In the past, you may have used tools like GitKraken, Sourcetree, or git log to visualize your r...
Unleashing the Power of Visual Studio 2022 for C++ Game Development
In Visual Studio 2022 v17.7, we are excited to bring you a multitude of performance tune-ups, productivity enhancements, and Unreal Engine integrations for C++ game development. In this blog post, you will learn how to take advantage of these new improvements whether you use Unreal Engine or a proprietary game engine. Not a game developer? See how these features can also benefit your C++ projects. At Visual Studio, we are dedicated to understanding the unique challenges faced by AAA game developers. We recognize that AAA game developers work with large and complex C++ codebases, which often come with speci...
My favorite features in Visual Studio 17.7
Two of my favorite features in Visual Studio happen to share a similar origin story. They were both created in deep collaboration with you, the user, and went through multiple iterations before you gave your final thumbs up. This is the story of how they came to be and why they are my favorites. File comparison Visual Studio 2012 introduced this feature and used by the Team Explorer tooling for working with TFS. However, it was never exposed outside Team Explorer. The only way to use it was from the Command Window (View -> Other Windows -> Command Window) by typing the command name Tools.DiffFiles and...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.7 Performance Enhancements
Visual Studio 2022 17.7 introduces a set of exciting performance improvements that cater to key areas like F5 Speed, Enhanced Light Bulb Performance in C#, improved memory consumption in C# spell checker, C++ Unreal Engine – IntelliSense optimization, Solution Explorer, Find in Files and much more. Our key theme is to elevate the performance of Visual Studio and these performance enhancements pave the way for a seamless and productive coding journey in Visual Studio 2022 17.7. Embrace the power of these upgrades and experience a new level of development efficiency. Happy coding! Enhanced F5 Speed The F5 ...
Let’s Co-Create! Your Voice Matters
We want to celebrate the suggestions you’ve made and the time you have invested in giving feedback to help build Visual Studio. We're thrilled to announce that Visual Studio 2022 17.7, which began with Preview 1 on May 16th, is now officially out of Preview and generally available! The journey from Preview to today has been shaped by the insights and feedback of our community. Whether you've been with us since the beginning or are just joining now, we want to thank you for the suggestions you’ve made in this new release. Feedback from developers like you influences every release of Visual Studio. We want you ...
Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 1 has arrived!
Hot on the heels of the General Availability of Visual Studio v17.7, (Visual Studio 2022 – 17.7 Now Available) we're thrilled to introduce the next set of enhancements that aim to streamline your workflow and boost your productivity. In this preview, we're bringing you features that can significantly improve your day-to-day tasks. From creating a PR directly within Visual Studio to a case-preserving search & replace across multiple files, we're making your tasks simpler and more efficient. We've also extended IntelliTest support for .NET 6+ and .NET Standard, making it easier to generate and manage unit ...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.7 Now Available
We're delighted to announce the General Availability (GA) of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.7 today. This release is a testament to our continued commitment to creating an enriched developer experience, powered by community feedback, and driven by the needs of the diverse developer landscape. From novice coders to experienced developers, this update packs a variety of productivity enhancements, performance improvements, and new features to streamline your coding journey. Throughout each of our Visual Studio releases, we have committed to enhancing Visual Studio across a set of enduring themes. Visual Studio 2...
Announcing the Unity extension for Visual Studio Code
Today we are thrilled to announce a preview of the Unity extension for Visual Studio Code. Remember when we launched the first preview of C# Dev Kit this past June? It delivers an editor-centric approach that elevates your C# development in Visual Studio Code with great features including a native Test Explorer, a dedicated Solution Explorer, and the incorporation of AI in code authoring, to name just a few. Today, we're delighted to present the initial preview of the Unity extension for Visual Studio Code. This new extension, Unity development in Visual Studio Code across Windows, macOS, and Linux. We i...
Subscribe to the Visual Studio Blog via email
We’re excited to announce that you can now subscribe to the Visual Studio blog via email! By subscribing, you’ll get the latest updates on Visual Studio delivered straight to your inbox. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t love getting fun and exciting emails? Here are some benefits of subscribing: To subscribe, simply leave your email address in the subscription box at the bottom of this or any other page on this website. And make sure emails from dblgsnews@microsoft.com don’t end up in your spam filter.
Rock Your Debugging Game: Parallel Stack Window Tips You Need to Know!
In Visual Studio 2022 17.6 and 17.7 we added a ton of new features in Parallel Stack Window that can take your multithreaded debugging to the next level. But what can the Parallel Stack Window do for you? The answer is simple - it offers valuable insights into how your code functions in multithreaded or parallel or async environments. Understanding how your code behaves in a parallel environment is crucial as multithreaded programming becomes the norm. Luckily, the Parallel Stacks Window comes to the rescue by visually presenting the execution flow of multiple threads. And with the following productivity-boost...
Too many tabs open? No problem!
When you have lots of tabs open in Visual Studio, your horizontal screen resolution determines how many will fit the Tab Well. The remaining document tabs won’t be shown unless you enable multi-row tabs. But what if you don’t want to lose the coding space multi-row tabs take up, and still need an easier way to get an overview of all your open documents? Here’s how we might fix it and we need your help! You might already be familiar with the experience of hovering over tabs and using the mouse wheel to scroll through them in some browsers and other applications. The Custom Document Well extension brought th...
Introducing a powerful new Extension Manager
The Visual Studio Marketplace is filled with incredible extensions that let you customize your IDE, boost your productivity, and integrate with your other development tools. We’ve heard feedback from developers like you that it can be difficult to find important information like ratings and full-length descriptions when browsing the Marketplace with the Extension Manager. Starting with Visual Studio 17.7 Preview 3, you can now enable a preview of our modernized Extension Manager that highlights extension details and helps you more easily discover the extensions you’ll love. We’re excited for you to try it and ...
Announcing the .NET MAUI extension for Visual Studio Code
Last month, we released the first preview of C# Dev Kit, a lightweight, editor-first experience that augments your C# development in Visual Studio Code with a Solution Explorer, native Test Explorer, AI-powered code authoring, and more. Today, we’re excited to announce the first preview of the .NET MAUI extension, which, paired with C# Dev Kit, gives you the tools you need to develop your cross-platform .NET mobile and desktop apps with VS Code on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can try out the .NET MAUI extension today – let us know what you think! The .NET MAUI extension lets you develop and debug y...
Get the most from Visual Studio with Microsoft Dev Box–now generally available
Today, we’re excited to announce that Microsoft Dev Box is now generally available. Below we’ll highlight a few significant features of Dev Box for Visual Studio users. Read the announcement blog to learn more about our journey to Microsoft Dev Box and what the service means for Visual Studio subscribers. Last month at the Build conference, we announced several new integrations between Visual Studio and Microsoft Dev Box. These integrations are designed to deliver the best Visual Studio experience possible, making Dev Box the go-to workstation for developers using Visual Studio. These features are focused o...
Visual Studio Toolbox: Accelerate your builds of SDK-style .NET projects
The Visual Studio Toolbox show helps you become a more productive developer by focusing on tooling in and out of Visual Studio. Our latest episode of VS Toolbox (available both on Learn and YouTube) features Drew Noakes from the .NET team. He demonstrates how you can dramatically reduce build times for SDK-style .NET projects. What is build acceleration? Build acceleration for .NET SDK style projects is an opt-in feature that directs Visual Studio to only build projects that had modifications while skipping projects that were unchanged. Enabling Build Acceleration can reduce incremental build times by up to 80...
Announcing Create a Pull Request in Visual Studio
We heard from you that you can do 90% of your development workflow in Visual Studio, but then need to rely on the web to create your pull requests. We're continually bringing productivity enhancements to Visual Studio and are excited to announce that as of 17.7 preview 2 release. You can now create a pull request without leaving the development environment. Creating a Pull Request We’ve been working on integrating more GitHub and Azure DevOps features into the git tooling to supercharge your productivity and collaboration. We know pull requests are highly utilized for code review in both open sour...
Configure Visual Studio policies using Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Intune)
Visual Studio global policies are now included in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Intune) settings catalog! It's easier for administrators to configure their organization’s devices now that the Visual Studio software policies are readily accessible in the Device Configuration Profile UI. A few months ago, we announced the release of Visual Studio Administrative Templates (ADMX files), which improved Visual Studio policy discoverability and usability. In order to use these ADMX files to deploy device configuration via Intune, an administrator had to take a couple of actions. First, they had to manually upload t...
Visual Studio 2022 17.7 Preview 2 is here!
Welcome to the Public Preview 2 of Visual Studio version 17.7! Hot on the heels of our recent Preview 1, we're thrilled to roll out another collection of upgrades tailored to empower developers like you. Preview 2 pushes the boundaries further, providing speed, productivity, and collaboration improvements for developers across different domains. Dive into this new wave of enhancements, spanning improved debugging capabilities, auto-decompilation for external .NET code, several C++ embedded and game development improvements, and more. Now you can even create your pull requests right within Visual Studio! Look...
Installing Visual Studio from an Internal Intranet Website
We’re happy to announce that starting with Visual Studio 2022 version 17.6, Visual Studio layouts are available to install from an internal intranet website! Enterprise customers have long been able to download a particular version of Visual Studio, host it on a private network file share, and make it available for their clients to install. This download cache of Visual Studio product files is commonly known as a layout. There are a few reasons why a company would choose to use layouts. For example, the administrator may want control what version of the product their organization uses. Or sometimes, the cli...
Visual Studio’s IntelliSense list can now steer GitHub Copilot code completions.
TL:DR GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio’s built-in AI assistance features are now better together. With the latest version of GitHub Copilot, changing your selection in Visual Studio's IntelliSense list steers the GitHub Copilot with additional context about your code, so you can easily explore the single and multi-line code completions to get just the code you need. Press TAB to accept the IntelliSense member, then TAB again to accept the Copilot prediction. With the latest release (version 1.84+), Copilot predictions are not only visible when the IntelliSense list when the IntelliSense is open, but your In...
Announcing C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code
We are thrilled to announce the preview release of C# Dev Kit, a new Visual Studio Code extension that brings an improved editor-first C# development experience to Linux, macOS, and Windows. The C# Dev Kit is designed to enhance your C# productivity when you’re working in VS Code. It works together with the C# extension, which has been updated to be powered by a new fully open-source Language Server Protocol (LSP) host, creating a performant, extensible, and flexible tooling environment that easily integrates new experiences into C# for VS Code. The source repo for this extension is in the process of being mig...
What’s New in SSDT 17.6: Ledger, Performance, Copilot
We are delighted to announce the new release of SQL Server Developer Tools for Visual Studio 17.6 released on May 16th, 2023. The major focus areas for this release are: SQL Server Developer Tools (SSDT) is a database tool within Visual Studio that lets users develop, build, test and publish their databases from a source-controlled project. It lets the users start from scratch with a new Database Project or import an existing database with a few clicks. SSDT is not available as a standalone installer but comes in the package with Visual Studio. We have added support to SQL Server 2022 ...
Iterating on your Welcome Experience feedback
One of Visual Studio’s goals is to help you quickly ‘get to code.’ We’ve recently experimented with Welcome Experience in Preview that helps you get to the code and tasks that you care about, right within the Visual Studio shell. Take a look at the original Welcome Experience design and its motivations in the previous blog post. Developers like you shared a lot of great feedback for that experience, so we’ve iterated once more. Read on to learn about the design and functionality changes we made to the Welcome Experience. To give this experience a try, please install the latest Visual Studio Preview build: ...
Create a Microsoft Power App for your ASP.NET Core Web API
Boost your developer journey by easily creating front ends for your web APIs. Low-code tooling is becoming increasingly popular among developers because it allows them to create applications faster and with less code. In Visual Studio 2022 17.6 preview 2, you can now connect to the Microsoft Power Platform via connected services and create custom connectors based on your ASP.NET web API. You can download the latest preview at Visual Studio Preview. In today’s blog post, we will cover prerequisites, how to create the custom connector from within Visual Studio and how to quickly build a front-end using Microsoft ...
Unified Settings: Share Your Feedback!
In a hybrid and cloud-based world, we want to make it easy for you to configure Visual Studio to your preferences whether you're working on a laptop from home, on your desktop in the office, or using a Dev Box or Azure VM. Unified Settings reimagines how you personalize your IDE with a modern UI that reacts to changes immediately, has portable storage, and offers full control over what is shared between different project workspaces and Visual Studio installations. Unified Settings helps you set up your environment with both individual and team/workspace settings in Visual Studio. The settings sync to the cloud...
All-In-One Search available in 17.6
The All-In-One Search experience was first introduced in 17.2 Previews, and we’ve been refining its quality since. The new search merges code and feature search capabilities into one UI, so you can go to one place to find the things you need. Real-time results and a preview of the results speed up the process to get you to the right place. You can learn more from this previous blog post. Now we’re ready to share it more broadly in the 17.6 release of Visual Studio! We’d appreciate any feedback you can provide on this Developer Community ticket. The new search experience is gradually rolling out so it ma...
Dev Drive for Performance Improvements in Visual Studio and Dev Boxes!
Performance has always been one of our key investment areas for developer tooling in Microsoft. We understand that it’s important for developers to have a fast workflow. That’s why we’re excited to share with you the support of Dev Drives in Visual Studio! Dev Drive for Visual Studio has just been released to help you optimize your workflow and increase your productivity. With Dev Drive, you can create a separate volume on your PC that will improve performance for disk-bound operations such as cloning, building, copying files, and package restore. We measured average improvements in these operations around of 25%...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.6 Performance Enhancements
Visual Studio 2022 17.6 introduces exciting performance enhancements in several key areas. These improvements aim to enhance the overall software development experience by boosting productivity, reducing wait times, and providing a smoother workflow. The performance enhancements in Visual Studio 2022 17.6 include: You can download Visual Studio 2022 from the Visual Studio downloads page or upgrade your existing installation by following instructions on the Update Visual Studio page. Solution Open Significant enhancements have been made to Solution-Open performance and Soluti...
Turbocharge your Visual Studio experience with Microsoft Dev Box
Microsoft Dev Box is a managed service that enables developers to create on-demand, high-performance, secure & ready-to-code workstations in the cloud. It gives companies the ability to pre-configure the development environment with all the tools needed to build, test, and deploy applications making developers more productive, regardless of their skill and experience level. In this blog post, we'll explore how Visual Studio 2022 can be optimized to maximize developer productivity and streamline the overall development workflow when used in combination with Microsoft Dev Box. Starting with ...
Sticky Scroll: Stay in the Right Context
When coding in a long file, it’s easy to lose track of the method or block you’re writing in. Or when scrolling through an unfamiliar codebase, it can become disorienting where you are in the code. Sticky Scroll can help you stay in the right context by sticking helpful scopes, including namespaces, classes, methods, loop initialization statements, and conditionals. Multiple code formats are supported, including C#, C++, XAML, and JSON. With a single click on a line in the Sticky Scroll header, you can quickly navigate directly to that line of code. Learn more about it from the previous blogpost. We first r...
Visual Studio 2022 17.7 Preview 1 is here!
Welcome to the Visual Studio Public Preview 1 of version 17.7! This exciting update offers a wide range of productivity enhancements tailored to the diverse needs of developers. Experience the cutting-edge improvements of Visual Studio and discover what lies ahead in this Preview release before it becomes widely available.
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.6 Now Available
In the sprint to the BUILD 2023 conference, we're thrilled to announce the general availability of Visual Studio version 17.6 today. This latest release delivers a range of powerful tools and features designed to empower you in crafting cutting-edge applications and experiences. The user-friendly environment, along with essential features like code completion, debugging, refactoring, and version control, caters to both experienced and novice developers striving to achieve their software development objectives, solidifying its position as the go-to IDE for millions of developers worldwide. We’ve committed t...
Get Ready for Visual Studio at Build 2023:<br/> Join Tens of Thousands Online!
Are you geared up for Build 2023? Microsoft's flagship developer conference is just a week away, and we have an incredible lineup of Visual Studio sessions that you simply cannot afford to miss! This year, Microsoft Build goes hybrid, offering you the best of both worlds - virtual and in-person experiences in Seattle, Washington, from May 23-25! Can't make it to Seattle? No worries! You can access a plethora of live sessions online for free, right from the comfort of your office. Immerse yourself in keynotes and sessions on Visual Studio, AI development, and the latest advancements in C# and .NET! W...
Surround selection experiment
You want to quickly select some text and surround it with quotation marks. So, you select your text and hit the quotation mark key on your keyboard, only to find that the selected text now has been replaced by a single “. What you hoped would happen was that the selected text would be surrounded by an opening and closing quotation mark like in the animation below. Let’s do something to fix this. In this experiment, we want to test if we can create a general feature for all languages that makes it easy to surround the selection. In fact, multiple developers have requested this feature, so remember to vote f...
Visual Studio UI Refresh
Microsoft Fluent design language provides a unified framework to create and deliver more productive, consistent, and accessible applications. The Fluent design principles have been applied across familiar products like Microsoft 365 and we’ve been using those principles in the IDE to make targeted improvements to real problems. We’re excited to share these early designs so we can incorporate your feedback into making Visual Studio the best IDE for developers. We’ve created a new Developer Community Ticket tracking the improvements we’ve made to the command shelf, menus, tool window chrome, and document tabs w...
Web API development in Visual Studio 2022
In Visual Studio 2022 one of the main scenarios for web developers is creating Web APIs with ASP.NET Core. In the latest preview of Visual Studio 2022, 17.6, we have added a number of updates to be more efficient when developing APIs. In this post we will go over a sample scenario of developing a new API from scratch and point out the new features along the way. To get started download the latest preview of Visual Studio 2022 with the link below. Some of the new features that we will cover in this post include. In this post we are going to show a full end-to-end for starting with a new...
Exploring JavaScript and TypeScript Development in Visual Studio
Over the last 12 months, we made many improvements to the JavaScript and TypeScript developer experience in Visual Studio so that you can run both your front-end and back-end together within one click in one place. You might have seen the updates but in this blog post we will detail the new and improved features now available when working with JavaScript and TypeScript in Visual Studio. We will focus mainly on the productivity improvements including the JavaScript and TypeScript project type, project templates, code editing, dependency management and compatibility with the VS Code debugging. All the featur...
Improving the Syntax Highlighting of JavaScript in Visual Studio
Syntax highlighting, aka colorization, is one of Visual Studio's essential features; it uses colors and styles to help guide our brains when reading code. Following this Developer Community suggestion, we decided to work on improving the JavaScript and TypeScript experience! Starting from 17.6 we improved existing colorization and expanded it to new areas including control keywords, strings in tags, escape characters, JSDocs, and more. This post walks you through these changes and how you can configure and personalize your own! Overview Syntax highlighting is a Visual Studio feature that dif...
Git Tooling Preview Features to Enhance Productivity
We’re excited to share productivity and quality of life improvements available to the Git experience in Visual Studio version 17.6 Preview 2. Download the latest Visual Studio Preview and watch our recent Visual Studio Toolbox Live session to check out the following new Git features. Improved Search for Related GitHub Issues and Azure DevOps Work Items During this release, we’ve improved on the Issues and Work Items integration in the commit message we introduced in 17.6 preview 1. You now get better search results when querying for items that you haven't updated recently. You also can view items that...
Improving Visual Studio performance with the new Instrumentation Tool
Summary With the release of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.6 we are shipping our new and improved Instrumentation Tool in the Performance Profiler. Unlike the CPU Usage tool, the Instrumentation tool gives exact timing and call counts which can be super useful in spotting blocked time and average function time. To show off the tool let’s use it to improve performance in Visual Studio. Wait, I thought Visual Studio already had an Instrumentation tool? If you were thinking, “Doesn't Visual Studio already have an Instrumentation Tool” then you were thinking right! So, what’s… new? Well, a whole list of things ...
Visual Studio Toolbox: Debug Threads & Tasks with Parallel Stacks
The Visual Studio Toolbox show helps you become a more productive developer by focusing on tooling in and out of Visual Studio. Our latest episodes of VS Toolbox (available both on Learn and YouTube) feature Mark Downie and Ramkumar Ramesh from the Visual Studio Diagnostics team. They demonstrate how you can use the Threads and Tasks views of the Parallel Stacks window in VS 2022 to debug your multithreaded applications. When debugging multithreaded applications, understanding the relationship between threads is important for properly designating and negotiating resources between them. In the Debug...
Visual Studio Toolbox: Integrated C++ Game Development
The Visual Studio Toolbox show helps you become a more productive developer by focusing on tooling both in and outside of Visual Studio. The show is available both on Learn and YouTube. Our latest episode features C++ program manager David Li, who shows how you can use the new Unreal Engine Integrations in Visual Studio 2022 17.5 to be more productive and build games faster with C++ and the Unreal Engine. David first talks about how Visual Studio helps you avoid the losing your focus by having to bounce back and forth between environments. He then shows how to install the Unreal Engine extensions and take adva...
GitHub Copilot chat for Visual Studio 2022
GitHub Copilot has become a trusted AI-assisted pair programmer helping to auto-complete comments and code more productively. That’s just the beginning though! We’ve been working to evolve Copilot to move beyond code completion and provide enhanced AI assistance that you can access throughout your development lifecycle, whatever task you happen to be doing at the time. Copilot chat in Visual Studio We’re bringing fully integrated AI-powered Copilot chat experiences to Visual Studio. This is no ordinary chat! With tight integration in Visual Studio, it understands what you’re working on. That means it can quickl...
Streamlining your Debugging process with Breakpoint Groups
Have you ever had a situation when you are debugging a complex scenario with a huge list of breakpoints, and you find yourself scrolling and tapping in the breakpoints windows to disable/enable them individually and repetitively? Then the new Breakpoint Groups feature in Visual Studio may be the answer for you. This feature will allow you to create named breakpoint groups with any number of breakpoints in them. This provides a way to customize the breakpoint configuration and toggle breakpoints individually or in combination making debugging, testing, and troubleshooting faster and more effective. Breakpoin...
Upgrading from IntelliCode custom team completions models to deep learning.
TL;DR – A deep learning model will now help provide starred completions for custom methods in the IntelliSense list. All users of Visual Studio 2022 will receive this improvement automatically. With original IntelliCode, a custom trained model was previously useful for ranking custom methods in a user’s code. When IntelliCode first shipped in Visual Studio, it used a simple Markov-chain model to rank methods in the IntelliSense list. This model couldn’t rank custom methods that are specific to your code, so we enabled developers to train repository-associated team & personal models to rank custom methods sp...
Help us investigate a new Welcome Experience in Visual Studio 17.6 Preview 2
A central theme across Visual Studio releases is 'get to code' quickly. Over the years, we’ve tried many approaches to accelerate start up, project selection or creation, and restoration of previous state. In Visual Studio 2019 we created the modal 'start window' experience that optimized for getting to the primary action most developers take when starting the shell. Since that release, there’s been mixed feedback. Much of the critical feedback revolved around the modality interruption when switching between solutions. That has led us to reconsider other options for "get to code." With your feedback in mind, w...
Improving the Spell Checker
Welcome to our latest blog post about the spell checker feature in Visual Studio 17.6 preview 2! We're excited to share with you the latest improvements we've made to this feature, which was first introduced in the Visual Studio 17.5 preview releases for C#, C++, and markdown files. We've received an overwhelming amount of valuable feedback from developers like you, which has helped shape and refine this feature before its release to the release channel. If you're new to the spell checker feature, check out our earlier blog post for an introduction. Otherwise, let's dive into the exciting enhancements in V...
Visual Studio 2022 v17.6 Preview 2 is now available
Preview 2 for Visual Studio 17.6 is now available! If you are a game developer, a mobile developer, or are interested in learning new tricks to better debug your code, check out this latest release. It’s as easy as upgrading your Preview channel in the Visual Studio installer. And if you haven’t activated your Preview channel for Visual Studio yet, click the button below to install Preview 2 now. You can also check out for the complete list of new experiences coming online for 17.6. Oh, and rest assured that Previews always install side-by-side with the officially supported Visual Studio releases, so you can a...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.5 Performance Enhancements
We are excited to announce that Visual Studio 2022 17.5 offers a range of performance enhancements that significantly improve the speed and responsiveness of the product in the following main areas: You can download Visual Studio 2022 from the Visual Studio downloads page or upgrade your existing installation by following the Update Visual Studio page. Build Acceleration for .NET SDK style projects Build Acceleration for .NET SDK style projects are an opt-in feature that directs Visual Studio to only build projects that had modifications while skipping projects that were unch...
Developing Accessible Apps with Visual Studio
When your application has an accessibility issue, it means that some users will find it harder or impossible to use your application. This means that a percentage of your users are having a bad experience or simply can’t use your product. The implications are far reaching, because many countries have laws governing accessibility in applications for consumers, government, or educational use. Accessibility is as important as privacy or security, to ensure your application is usable by all developers and complies with legal standards. The Integrated Accessibility Checker That’s easier said than done, but Visual St...
Build Better Extensions with VisualStudio.Extensibility Preview 3!
Today, we’re very excited to announce the third public preview of VisualStudio.Extensibility, our new SDK for creating extensions for Visual Studio! The VisualStudio.Extensibility SDK focuses on extensions that run out-of-process from the IDE for improved performance and reliability, and it features a modern API that has been streamlined and carefully engineered to maximize developer productivity. This release builds on our first and second public previews, and it brings some big features like an API to query and modify project information and the ability to create incredible debugger visualizers. Pleas...
GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2022
GitHub Copilot uses OpenAI Codex to suggest code and entire functions in real-time right from your editor. Trained on billions of lines of public code, GitHub Copilot turns natural language prompts including comments and method names into coding suggestions across dozens of languages. In Visual Studio, Copilot acts as a pair-programmer making it more joyous to code – and increases your productivity at the same time. And an updated version of Copilot for Visual Studio was just released. It contains a lot of fixes, tweaks, and other improvements. Check out this demo video: Together with the built-in AI in...
Try Visual Studio 2022 v17.6 Preview 1
The first Preview for Visual Studio 2022 17.6 is now available! This release expands on the recently released 17.5 version of Visual Studio and aims at enhancing your productivity whether you’re a .NET developer, a game developer, and/or a C++ developer. Why should you try the latest preview? Because it’s like living in the future – you get to try all the capabilities that we’re actively working on for the upcoming 17.6 release, influence their development early by providing your suggestions and by reporting any problem you encounter. And you get to do that while reliably continuing your critical work, as Prev...
The fastest way to add files and folders
Your Visual Studio team is excited to announce the release of the highly anticipated "Quick Add Files & Folders" feature in Visual Studio version 17.5! This new feature is the fastest and most convenient way to add files and create folders within your projects. Based on the feedback from the Visual Studio Developer Community, Quick Add was requested and highly voted on, making it a top priority for our development team. Yes, your votes matter! The team has iterated on the early preview to bring you the most efficient and effective way to manage your files. Check out this video to learn more and then ...