Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 Generally Available and 16.3 Preview 1

Jacqueline Widdis

Today we are making Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 generally available, as well as Preview 1 of version 16.3. You can download both versions from VisualStudio.com. If you already have Preview installed, you can alternatively click the notification bell from inside Visual Studio to update. We’ve highlighted some notable features below, but you can also see a list of all the changes in the current release notes or the Preview release notes.

What to expect in Visual Studio version 16.2

Test Explorer

Test Explorer provides better handling of large test sets, easier filtering, more discoverable commands, tabbed playlist views, and customizable columns to fine-tune test information displayed.

 

 

This image shows the expanded Test Explorer .
Improved Test Explorer

 

.NET Developer Productivity

Version 16.2 supports debugging JavaScript in the new Microsoft Edge Insider browser for ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core projects.  To do this, install the browser, set a breakpoint in the application’s JavaScript and start a debug session.

There are improvements in .NET developer productivity as version 16.2 brings back the Sort Usings refactoring option. Developers also have the ability to convert switch statements to switch expressions and also generate a parameter for a variable from the Quick Actions menu.

In addition, there is an enriched experience of creating and configuring Azure SignalR services when enabling real-time communication in web applications.

C++

In the C++ space, changes include Clang/LLVM support for MSBuild projects, incremental build for Windows Subsystem for Linux, and a new C++ quick action to install missing packages in CMake projects using vcpkg.

CMake projects using vcpkg
C++ quick action to install missing packages in CMake projects using vcpkg

 

Changes in the throughput of the C++ linker significantly improve iteration build times for the largest of input.  This should result in an improvement to all codebases.  Internal measurements taken on the C++ team saw 2X ranges for /debug:fast and /incremental, while /debug:full typically ranged from 3X to 6X and up.  More information is available on the C++ Team Blog.

C++ Iteration Build Time Demo
Improvements to the C++ linker.

 

Usability

To enhance usability, users who opted to hide their toolbars in Visual Studio receive additional vertical space. Upon hiding all toolbars, the Live Share, Feedback and Badge icons are moved to the top.  The steps to restore the toolbar are View > Toolbars and select the desired toolbar.

Adding and removing toolbar selections
Increased usability of the toolbar

 

A list of preview features is findable under Tools > Options > Environment > Preview Features.  This page also allows users to learn about upcoming features as well as participate in surveys to provide additional perspectives on future changes.

Looking forward to 16.3 Preview 1: .NET Core 3.0 Preview and C++

.NET Core 3.0 Preview

Version 16.3 Preview 1 has added support for .NET Core 3.0 Preview.  Additional features include .NET Core project templates like Worker and gRPC for building microservices or Blazor for building client web apps using C#.

Because the ability to search in Visual Studio is a key driver for discoverability, there is an added search box in the start window for users to quickly locate recently used projects, solutions, and folders. The most recently used code containers also integrate with Visual Studio global search so they can be found there as well. This is a direct result of it being one of the highest voted feature requests.  Thanks for all of the feedback!

Improved search feature example

Finding the right project template should be easier than previous iterations.  Template search in the New Project Dialog now supports fuzzy search allowing for typos and plurals while also highlighting matching keywords and ranking results based on relevance.

Recent project search example

Visual Studio will now pick up any updates made to the templates via the .NET CLI and, as a result, the two are kept in sync. New tooling is included in support of the new templates.  Examples include publishing worker projects to container registries and managing Open API & gRPC service references.

This version of Visual Studio also includes many productivity improvements. C++ projects now have IntelliSense member lists filtered based on type qualifiers. Developers have the ability to toggle line comments with a quick command (Ctrl + K, Ctrl + /). .NET projects load more asynchronously and renaming classes in the editor can also rename the containing file. Furthermore, debugging and profiling includes better Edit and Continue support.  There is also auto-expanding of the hot path in the performance profiler and the ability to move both forwards and backward in the profiler during an investigation.

Give it a try today and let us know what you think!

Everyone is encouraged to update to Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 by downloading directly from VisualStudio.com or updating via the notification bell inside Visual Studio. An alternative option includes the Visual Studio Installer for updates. Try out the 16.3 Preview 1 release by downloading it online or updating from within the IDE from a previous Preview Channel release.

Most noteworthy, Visual Studio teams are continuously driven by feedback, so we look forward to hearing what you have to say about our latest releases. If you discover any issues, make sure to let us know by using the Report a Problem tool in Visual Studio. Additionally, you can head over to Visual Studio Developer Community to track your issues, suggest a feature, ask questions, and find answers from others. We use your feedback to continue to improve Visual Studio 2019, so thank you again on behalf of our entire team.

60 comments

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  • Chuck Ryan 0

    You can keep trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, aka New Project Dialog, but it is not going to solve the underlying fact that it is a poorly thought out excuse for a design concept that should embarass you every time you have to promote it like this.
    And yes we expect you will continue to ignore the feedback and push ahead like you have since you first initiated the 2012 IDE Protocol, and try to pretend it never happened, but don’t worry we will be sure to remind you at every opportunity.

    • Eugene Ivanoff 0

      +1 Bring back old New Project dialog!

    • Ran Karat 0

      This new one is so much better.

    • Jan Zimmermann 0

      Oh no! Do not bring back this old school dialog!

  • Eaton 0

    When’s the Visual Studio update with .NET Core WinForms designer support coming?

    • David Hunter 0

      This raised another question. I can’t find how to downgrade to 16.1 which no longer seems to be downloadable. Given that 16.2 is unusable we need to be able to do this.

      • Jacqueline WiddisMicrosoft employee 0

        You can find instructions and links to previous versions on our Visual Studio Releases page. I have also passed on your comments to the appropriate team.

        • David Hunter 0

          Sorry I should have mentioned I know about that page. The problem is it doesn’t even mention the Community edition and only has links for Professional and Enterprise. For now I installed Professional from that page which fixes stuff for now and gives me 30 days. It would be good if that page had at least a comment about Community, even if just to say “tough luck no downgrades allowed” 

          • David Hunter 0

            It was just confirmed by MS this is a replica of the know issue https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/issues/37456 which is probably a bit of  a niche issue. It may effect the MoreLinq code base. The fix may get back ported to 16.3.  

        • Joe Saffo 0

          Jacqueline,

          As David Hunter mentioned in his reply, Community edition does not appear as links on the page you provided. There is a regression in 16.2.5, and I need to downgrade to 16.2.3. However, I am unable to find a link to get that version anywhere on the internet. The Visual Studio installer only lets me install 16.2.5, and there does not appear to be an option to change that.

          Please let me know how to download the Community edition installer for 16.2.3.

          Thank you.

  • Federico Navarrete 0

    Hi Jacqueline or someone from MS, I’d like to raise a point that Xamarin Android is having several issues in each release from VS2019.
    I’ve been testing stable versions as previews (even one from today [2019-07-25 7:15 CEST]) and many things that were working a previous release ago now are broken. I have raised several tickets in GitHub, VS Community and I’m even in contact with some MS engineers about this; also, I provided my solutions from multiple projects.
    I consider this situation should be escalated to bring stability back to Xamarin Android since in 2017 it was working properly, but now, it’s quite hard to say what is going to be broken in the next release and only minor things are fixed or we need to find partial workarounds.
    I cannot imagine this situation in regular production environments where you have CI/CD solutions like AzureDevOps on going.

    • Jon DouglasMicrosoft employee 0

      Hey Federico, Thank you so much for your comment. I just wanted to chime in here and let you know that we’ve addressed many of these issues for 16.3 Preview 3. Majority of the tickets you’ve created have been addressed thus far and will be included in that release. If there’s any specific issue that you haven’t seen movement on, please let us know so we can work on resolving it before the next major release.

  • Dave Bacher 0

    .NET Core 2.2 isn’t in the list and, if installed, has to be repaired after the upgrade to 16.2.
    IDE setting to load preview SDKs (for 3.0 in 16.2) is additionally cleared during the update, and then 3.0 has to be repaired afterwards as well before it is listed.  Haven’t installed the preview IDE yet due to download size / time.  Looks like GitHub credentials may also have to be regenerated after the update.

  • Hitesh Davey 0

    Ever since the VS2019 released officially; every developer who tried it had complained about NEW PROJECT dialog but MS VS team is just ignoring all complaints on new dialog and on another hand, they say “we are listing every complaint, feedback & suggestion to improve VS”.
    This new dialog box is just useless and pathic by design compare to classic VS2017 dialog! Can’t you simply understand this?

    • Evgeny Vrublevsky 0

      It seems that somebody from management just rejects to admit that they spent a lot of time and money on a useless thing.

    • GSoft Consulting 0

      At this point in the game, it makes sense to listen to what users need to successfully accomplish their task. It is about the time that MS starts to listen to users.  

  • Neven Lalic 0

    For those complaning about New Project Dialog. Just how many projects are you making daily?. It’s like complaning about gas cap on a car to a manufacturer.

    • Chuck Ryan 0

      Yes, but some of us have read their posts on the design of the New Project Dialog and did not miss the fact that they want this design to be a new standard throughout VS. So does that make it impactful enough to let them know it is not something we feel works?

    • Chuck Ryan 0

      Ok, since something was aparently a problem with my first response, let’s try it this way. @Pratik Nadagouda posted an article called “Redesigning the New Project Dialog” on this blog and in the final paragraph is the following sentence “This is the first iteration of a new design paradigm we’re trying to adopt for Visual Studio.” This is why we are not sitting back quietly and just accepting these changes, it is only the beginning.

      • Wil Wilder Apaza Bustamante 0

        This comment has been deleted.

  • Keith Nicholas 0

    Can you please hire a keyboard junky and every time before you release new features, make sure your keyboard junky can effectively drive the UI via the keyboard.  For whatever reason the start window the recent items are not the currently select item so you can’t arrow to the appropriate project.   
    Its great now the screen without toolbars properly works, but now I have to do a silly dance because, for some silly reason, you can’t set the Debug Target on .net core project anywhere except in the Standard toolbar.  

    Can you guys stop working on things like liveshare and just get a bunch of Ux designers to go through the UI from the persepctive of a mouser and keyboard junky and make sure everything is nicely designed?  Don’t tell people to “raise an issue and see if enough people vote for it before we even consider looking at it”.   No, just design your core product nicely without having everyone ask you to do it. So many things are insanely bad for over a decade.  Or open source visual studio so we can fix it for you.    
    If I seem bitter it’s because I have been complaining about the same issues for over a decade and everytime I do I get lots of upvotes or me toos for the same issues….

  • Martin Liversage 0

    I was so happy to see ” .NET projects load more asynchronously and renaming classes in the editor can also rename the containing file.” However, it doesn’t work for me. Also, there is no mention of this in the release notes. On GitHub it seems that it will be fixed in 16.3. So is this a feature in 16.2 and I’m just failing to get it to work or do I have to wait for the next release?

  • Jacqueline WiddisMicrosoft employee 0

    Thank you all for taking the time to feedback the blog post and our new features. I’ve been reading the comments as well as the linked Developer Community items. I can see where this must be very frustrating to feel as if you aren’t being heard or that you can’t work in your projects as efficiently as you’d like. At this point, I have made all involved teams aware of the feedback so far. I would love to be able to share a definitive answer as to what is being done and a timeline to see improvement, but I am unable at this point. Decisions take time, but we hear you.

    • Wil Wilder Apaza Bustamante 0

      This comment has been deleted.

  • Gavin HeMicrosoft employee 0

    Hello, Visual Studio team,
    When will Vertical Tab come back? Take a look at how many upvotes and comments people have been posted https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/idea/467369/vertical-group-tab.html
    This feature suggestion got stuch at “Under Review” for almost 6 months. Why did the review take this long? Can someone give a push on this request?

  • SuperCocoLoco . 0

    Please Microsoft, listen to your users and stop looking at your belly button and stop listening to yourself:
    1. Restore the old Start Page, or at least make it at an option. Nobody wants the new ugly Start modal Windows and nobody has requested or demanded it. It is completely useless.
    2. Restore the old new project Window dialog. Nobody wants the new ugly mess new project Windows and nobody has requested or demanded it. It is completely a mess.
    3. Make “Extensions Menu” top level menus. Nobody has requested or demanded it and requieres more clicks to access useful menu options.
    4. Make the “Show title bar” a permanent option. Not a temporary solution that will be removed in a future Visual Studio version. Nobody has requested or demanded it and has contributed nothing. It should even be enabled by default.

    This are things that makes Visual Studio 2019 unuseable for me, waiting for this things fixed in order to upgrade from Visual Studio 2017.

    • James Foye 0

      You are screaming into the wind. They cannot resist the temptation to change the UI for the worse on every release, and then when people complain, too bad, it’s a done deal, and besides, 3% of the community actually likes it.

  • Christian Campos 0

    Please, add a search bar to properties window for Xamarin and ASP.NET.

  • Florian Harde 0

    Hi,
    I’m not sure if this is the approriate place to ask, but I’m mainly concerned with the development of the Graphics Diagnostics at the momemnt and wanted to know which priority this part of the IDE has right now. 
    Recently, GD startet to show wrong results and crash on a regular basis, which makes it hard to debug any frame captures. For now, I switched to RenderDoc, but I really like GD and want to use it. Sadly, I couldn’t find much regarding the issues I’m facing or the development of the GDs.
    It startet to behave wierd once Compute Shaders and HDR came together. There are issues like having wrong values when stepping through the code while the results looks right, crashing while trying to open an UAV or simply showing wierd frame results. 

    • Justin GoshiMicrosoft employee 0

      Thank you for your input. I sent you an email to follow up offline.

  • Matteo Comi 0

    Hello,
    I’m trying to update VS 2019 to version 16.2 but it is really slow downloading the update. Is there any problem or issue? Network speed and status are ok and healthy.

  • Kamil Gilmanov 0

    Tests with dynamic TestCases (use TestCaseSource attribute) doesn’t run. 

  • trailmax trailmax 0

    I seem to be missing something – on Open Recent your screenshot shows a search bar – fantastic! (Or so I thought). But I don’t get it – There is simploy no search bar in my 16.2.0: https://i.imgur.com/zGRmApY.png 
    Do I need to enable it somewhere?
    Also, I don’t get what are all the people moaning about new dialogs. Start window with the list of recents is great (minus my missing search box). New project? How often are you creating new projects? No, really, how often? Cause I make them about once a month. Rare enough not to care about UI, cause every time it feels like a first time. Am I doing something wrong here?

    • Chuck Ryan 0

      Maybe try reading the posts that explain why?
      Or if that is too hard:
      @Pratik Nadagouda posted an article called “Redesigning the New Project Dialog” on this blog and in the final paragraph is the following sentence “This is the first iteration of a new design paradigm we’re trying to adopt for Visual Studio.” This is why we are not sitting back quietly and just accepting these changes, it is only the beginning.

      • Pratik NadagoudaMicrosoft employee 0

        We’re hearing your feedback and our design team is taking it into consideration when planning and implementing new features going forward. I apologize that it’s just taking a bit of time to see the effects. Thanks for your patience Chuck!

    • Pratik NadagoudaMicrosoft employee 0

      The search box is a new feature in 16.3 Preview 1, which you can download here – https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/ to get the latest features we release. And I’m glad you’re excited about it! Please do let the team know what you think when you try it out or suggest any improvements through the Visual Studio feedback tool. 

  • Olmo del Corral 0

    The new Test Explorer doesn’t show the text written with Debug.WriteLine. Using xUnit. 

  • Jens Samson 0

    Stil the same inexplicable hangs.
    Yesterday VS hung when adding a variable to the watch window.
    I killed the entire process, restarted VS, ran the same code, stopped at the same place, tried to add the same variable to the watch window, same hang.
    After performing this dance multiple times I restarted my machine (Win 10 1903), performed the same steps and everything worked.
    I get that this is a major problem to debug, but VS 2017 never was this buggy.
    I also don’t think it’s machine related because the same problems appear for all of our developers.
    Just fix the thing !!!

    • Radu 0

      Since I’ve updated to 16.2 I also have inexplicable random hangs. Previously, from time to time, just for about 30 seconds. After restarting Visual Studio everything worked OK. Today (16.2.1) I have only rearranged some buttons on a form and suddenly, before even saving the changes , Visual Studio hanged completely. Although it wasn’t hanged in the known way in which the application is marked so in Task Manager and in the Title bar. No, it just didn’t react at any mouse or keyboard inputs. In the end I had to kill it from Task Manager. Luckily, I don’t have to restart my machine; but who knows?! The day is long.

      • Varun GuptaMicrosoft employee 0

        Hi Radu, I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing hangs. I would like to take a look at this. Can you please use “Report a problem” tool to file a report, and use “record” functionality, which would automatically collect diagnostic information for investigation for VS engineering team (link to documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-report-a-problem-with-visual-studio?view=vs-2019) . If there is a hang on one instance of VS, you can open another instance of VS to launch this tool, and record hang that’s happening with other instance of VS. You would get an email with the link to the tracking item. Please share the link to the feedback item here, so I can pick it up. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

    • Varun GuptaMicrosoft employee 0

      Hi Jens, I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing hangs. I would like to take a look at this. Can you please use “Report a problem” tool to file a report, and use “record” functionality, which would automatically collect diagnostic information for investigation for VS engineering team (link to documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-report-a-problem-with-visual-studio?view=vs-2019) . If there is a hang on one instance of VS, you can open another instance of VS to launch this tool, and record hang that’s happening with other instance of VS. You would get an email with the link to the tracking item. Please share the link to the feedback item here, so I can pick it up. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

  • McClure, Thomas D. 0

    Any chance you will allow the developers more control over the intellisense auto-complete? The ability to turn it off or to a minimum when adding new code would provide a great boost in productivity.

    • Varun GuptaMicrosoft employee 0

      Hi Thomas, How does IntelliSense auto-complete impact your experience? Can you please share more context. Thank you!

  • Greg Larsen 0

    Hello Jacqueline,
    Today I downloaded version 16.2.1 of Community Edition as I previously had 16.1.   This was a big mistake…when I opened my sql project the UI behaved horribly.  I had a tab open with the “view code”, or create sql for a table that was previously up on the prior version.  The UI went crazy, flashing wildly and giving me no ability to do anything – screen froze.  Memory climbed in task manager up to over 500 MB and kept climbing – so clearly a loop of some kind.  I had to kill the program with Task Manager finally.  I re-entered the project by restarting VS and closed all of my open tabs. I then again opened my sql for a table (one with about 100 attributes, so larger than a page to view).  When I tried to simply scroll up and down inside that tab random file names were copied into the code instead of allowing the display to scroll.
    Clearly this is completely broken so somebody had not adequately tested this build. It is the Community Edition.  Can you please check this out and also post a link where we can revert back to 16.1?  At least that edition was stable as far as I know.
    Many thanks
    Greg

    • Chuck Ryan 0

      While you are waiting for an official reply you may want to check to be sure your video driver is upgraded to the latest version and if that does not fix the issue, open the Visual Studio Installer and select the [MORE] button and then [REPAIR]. I have found that most of the time with Visual Studio things go alot smoother if I do a repair after any significant upgrade. Good luck.

    • Dhruva Narasimha Murthy (Virtuosity)Microsoft employee 0

      Thank you for letting us know about this issue. We tried a quick repro of this, but were able to reproduce only a part of the issue. Can you please report this in Developer Community so that we can monitor and open further dialog with you to gather additional information?

  • Michael Coffey 0

    Please add the search recent projects function to VS 2017!  You are still pushing updates for it anyway.  I don’t want to “upgrade” to 19.

  • Davood Motevalizadeh 0

    After updating visual studio 2019 to version 16.2.2 when I wanted to create a new team project on my collection, it missed this menu item. Everything works ok and I can create it from web portal but There is no menu item,its just a menu to manage connection, whats wrong?Is it a bug or what happened to it?
    post with pictures

  • Davood Motevalizadeh 0

    After updating visual studio 2019 to version 16.2.2 when I wanted to create a new team project on my collection, it missed this menu item. Everything works ok and I can create it from web portal but There is no menu item,its just a menu to manage connection, whats wrong?Is it a bug or what happened to it?
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57501950/there-is-no-men-to-create-new-team-project-on-visual-studio-2019

  • Davood Motevalizadeh 0

    After updating visual studio to version 16.2.2 when I wanted to create a new team project on my collection, it missed this menu item. Everything works ok and I can create it from web portal but There is no menu item,its just a menu to manage connection, whats wrong?Is it a bug or what happened to it?
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57501950/there-is-no-men-to-create-new-team-project-on-visual-studio-2019

  • Ricardo Ildefonso 0

    I just update to VS 2019 vs. 16.2.3 (August, 20th.)
    Is it possible start to develop Blazor using this version or it is necessary to use Preview vs. 16.3?
    Can I install a .Net Core 3.0 with the VS 16.2.3 stable version?
    Thanks.

  • GSoft Consulting 0

    Thank you, team, for maintaining and releasing VS on a regular basis. I am sure you receive so much feedback and a large specter of opinions. Please, next time remind us where we can vote on future changes and features and show the progress based on this report. 

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