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
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 ...
Reference GitHub Issues and Pull Requests in Visual Studio
We’re excited to announce the preview release of linking GitHub Issues. With Visual Studio 2022 17.6 Preview 1 you can now mention your issues in the commit message box in the Git Changes window. Speed up your workflow by linking your related work items directly in Visual Studio. You can use the related items to get more context from the Git Repository window. Learn more about how to leverage this feature below. Reference Your Related Items Building on the existing Azure DevOps work item support, we’ve enabled the same experience with GitHub. To try it out: Get Access to Is...
Visual Studio 2022 can now Always Update on Close!
Do you want Visual Studio 2022 to always stay up to date with the latest goodness with little-to-no action from your end? Then look no further, because as of now, we support the ability to “Always Update on Close”! Starting with Visual Studio 2022 version 17.5, we’ve made it easier to apply available updates when Visual Studio closes if you’ve made a one-time configuration change in Visual Studio. You can find this option in the Tools > Options > Product Updates dialog. This setting is configurable on a per instance basis of Visual Studio 2022 and we highly encourage you to enable this feature to s...
Maximizing the value of IntelliCode with API usage examples: Real-World Code Examples at Your Fingertips
As a software developer, we've all faced the frustration of having to leave our IDE to search for documentation, code examples, Stack Overflow, blog posts or simply trying to remember how to use a certain API. What if we told you that we have a solution for you? Now with Visual Studio 17.6 Preview, IntelliCode makes finding real-world code examples for common APIs easier than ever. With this feature, you'll have real examples at your fingertips. See how an API has been used in real-world projects. Saving you time and making your coding even more efficient. Under your fingertips IntelliCode API usage examples en...
Visual Studio 2022 – 17.5 Released
We’re excited to announce that Visual Studio 17.5 is now generally available. This release is full of updates that take friction out of your daily workflows making it easier for you stay in the zone while you code. Features like all-in-one search and intent-based suggestions help you move faster, while improved build and debug speeds ensure your IDE won’t slow you down. For .NET and cloud developers, we’ve focused on improving the inner-loop dev experience. New .http/.rest files make it easier to test and iterate on your APIs directly in Visual Studio, while improved Dev Tunnels help streamline the configu...
Visual Studio for Mac 17.5 is now available
We are pleased to announce the release of Visual Studio for Mac 17.5. Along with the usual incremental improvements, we’ve focused on improving the Git experience for this release. Read along as we look at these improvements and the other big changes made. As always, if you want to know all the changes made during this release, you can check out the release notes. If you are already using the Visual Studio for Mac Preview release, use the Visual Studio > Check for Updates… menu item to update. If you aren’t using it yet, download it now: Git Improvements The most noticeable new Git featu...
Visual Studio AI-Assistance: A Developer’s Best Friend
The Visual Studio family leverages AI to help you stay focused on the creative tasks that get the core logic of your application built. For Visual Studio and VS Code, IntelliCode is free and assists with writing, editing and understanding code in popular languages. With IntelliCode, models run locally, meaning that none of your code leaves your machine. This blogpost will focus on IntelliCode. For users desiring even more AI capabilities, Copilot and Copilot for Business are also supported by Visual Studio and VS Code. Copilot’s models are cloud based. Tips, tricks, and engineering story behind IntelliC...
Introducing the Git Status Bar and Testing Improvements in Visual Studio for Mac 17.5
Last week saw the release of the third preview in the lead up to the official release of Visual Studio for Mac 17.5, and in this blog post we’re going to look at some of the changes in this release - the new Git Status Bar, and some other improvements that have been made to the Test Explorer tool window. Git Branch Selector Improving the Git experience is one of Visual Studio for Mac team’s primary areas of focus for 17.5and one of the big new features is the Git Status Bar. When you open a solution which has a Git repository the Git Status Bar will appear in the Status Bar area at the bottom left of...
Documents and tool windows unleashed
We’re continuing our video series with tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Visual Studio. This week is all about managing tool windows and documents. There are lots of options to customize how we layout the various windows, documents, and tabs that you use every day. Knowing about these features will help you optimize your usage of Visual Studio and make you a happier and more productive developer. First up, we’re looking at how to work with tool windows and documents in this video. Now that you know more about how to customize the windows, let’s look at how to save the layouts and how to sw...