Visual Studio Blog

The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Now Introducing Arm64 Support for VS Extensions!

Back in June, we announced Arm64 Visual Studio 2022 application, the first version of Visual Studio that natively supports building and debugging Arm64 apps on Arm-based processors.  Now, we’re excited to announce the extensions you write, and use, are supported in Arm64 VS!   Adding Arm64 support to your new or existing extension...

Adding color to bracket pairs

When dealing with deeply nested brackets in Visual Studio, it can be hard to figure out which brackets match and which do not. For people with color blindness or other optic maladies, the problem can be even worse. By color-coding bracket pairs, we’re making this much easier. (image) Various IDE’s and editors offer this feature ...

VisualStudio.Extensibility: A New Way to Write Extensions

Last year, we announced the first phase of a new extensibility model for Visual Studio.  This new model will make extensions easier to write and more reliable along with additional benefits such as being able to install these extensions without restarting the IDE.  Now, we’re excited to announce the second phase of the new extensibility ...

Differentiating Visual Studio instances

When you have multiple instances of Visual Studio open at the same time, it can be tricky to tell them apart. Especially if you’re working on different branches of the same solution, which makes them look almost identical. What if each instance could have a unique color so you could instantly tell them apart? Would you use it? (image...

Analysis Services and Reporting Services extensions for Visual Studio 2022 are here!

We’re happy to announce the popular and long-awaited Analysis Services, RDLC Report Designer, and Reporting Services extensions are available for Visual Studio 2022!  Here’s how these Microsoft extensions for SQL Server can further enhance your business intelligence solution development environment. SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) ...