Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 5
Jordan Matthiesen
Today, we released Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 5, marking the first Visual Studio for Mac release running on .NET 6 and natively on Appleās M1 (ARM-based) processor. This change has resulted in some immediate performance wins and lays the foundation for the team to innovate more rapidly in the future. We also continued the work of moving the IDE to fully native macOS UI by upgrading more high use parts of the IDE including the Document Switcher and Document Outline. You can read all about the latest changes in the release notes. Get the latest release now by using the Visual Studio > Check for Updatesā¦ menu, or download it directly:
Visual Studio for Mac is the IDE for .NET developers building apps for the web and cloud using ASP.NET Core, mobile using .NET or Xamarin, and Unity games on the Mac. Depending on the size of your company and what youāre working on, you may be eligible to use Visual Studio Community for Mac. For those with Visual Studio Subscriptions, youāll find Visual Studio Professional for Mac or Visual Studio Enterprise for Mac are included in your subscription. Learn more about how to activate your Visual Studio for Mac license on our website.
.NET 6 CLR brings performance wins on both M1 & Intel processors
The move to run Visual Studio for Mac on the .NET 6 CLR is a critical investment that will allow us to take advantage of the latest innovations from .NET. One of the first benefits of moving from the Mono runtime to .NET 6 is improved performance for several scenarios granted by the new I/O implementation in .NET 6. Please note these are still early builds so you may see slightly different results, but that weāre continuing the investment in optimizing Visual Studio for Mac on M1 processors and would love your feedback.
More features moved to native UI: Document Switcher and Document Outline
In addition to the transition to .NET 6 weāre making more progress transitioning to a native MacOS UI. The entire IDE experience is now implemented in native macOS UI, where previously it was a combination of native UI and custom drawn UI controls using a non-native control library. To date weāve migrated near 95% of the user experience from Visual Studio 2019 for Mac, including the editors, all commonly used tool windows, and most preferences and project settings. In Preview 5 weāve continued this work by porting the Document Switcher and Document Outline window.
You can learn more about the benefits that come from moving to native UI in our Preview 1 blog post where we highlight our goal with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac: to make a modern .NET IDE tailored for the Mac that delivers the productive experience youāve come to love in Visual Studio.
Please keep sharing your feedback
We want your help making Visual Studio 2022 for Mac the best developer experience for you. Your feedback continues to inform our plans. If youāre interested in receiving updates directly from our team, join our Preview Newsletter ā weāll share updates on whatās new and provide more opportunities for you to give feedback to our team.
Finally, please share your thoughts in our Visual Studio for Mac Preview survey, and keep sending those suggestions or problem reports coming! You can use the Help > Report a Problem or Help > Provide a Suggestion menus to share feedback, or go to the Visual Studio for Mac Developer Community site to vote for those that are most important to you.
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30 comments
love to see one of the most important product from Microsoft that running on .net 6!
What’ next for Vs for win ? Don’t wait it 3 year to move to .net 8 and next 3 years to combine vs for win and vs for mac into one product.
I can definitively feel the difference in speed that great. I got some strange behaviour when renaming files I donāt know what Iam doing but it turn its doesnāt rename file the good fileā¦ otherwise Iam waiting for hot reload and code cleanup on save and think itās 2 quick win
Good job
I have experienced some folder renaming oddities as well. I renamed a folder and it changed the name of another folder as well.
Is it also ready to create “.NET MAUI Preview 12” solutions?
Wow thats great!! Im very happy to see it run native on m1 im gonna try it out thank you!
thanks @jonathan, please let us know how it goes!
Is it possible to re-enable “KnownFrameworkReference Update=”Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App.WPF” IsWindowsOnly=”false”” in csproj file?
This setting helped me to develop (Intellisense possible, showes me code errors) my WPF application in macOS with possibility to compile at least the DLL-projects (sadly not the WinExe projects though). Currently, I’ve to continue developing in VS Mac v8 š
Hey, @umisc – thanks for the comment. Could you please post this issue on our Developer Community site? This will help us make sure it’s properly in our bug backlog, and make it easier to troubleshoot with you.
Hi @Jordan, thanks for your reply. I’ve post this request a while ago (with some explanations and ideas) on the Developer Community site. You can find it here.
Thank you for this. Is there any word on when the GA will be?
Nothing to share out just yet. We plan to release a Release Candidate (RC) build of the product when we’re closer to the GA release and we’ll share more specifics at that time.
Really great IDE, but UI elements are very, very small in 4k resolution, same as the fonts on tools windows. In other IDE’s that’s small icons but they are comfortable to work with. Hope it gets better on next versions!
Thanks for the comment, @Danilo. Could you please share your experience on our Developer Community site and submit this as a new issue? It would help to see a screen shot and through the Developer Community site we can ask a few more questions.
This version is completely broken for Android projects. Avoid it at any cost if this is your target project!
These are the bugs I already reported:
Android Archives are invisible in Visual Studio for Mac Preview 5
Restoring NuGet packages breaks Visual Studio for Mac 2022 Preview 5
Manage Android Devices is empty in Visual Studio for Mac Preview 5
I’m wondering what the internal process to release these projects for general testing is. If I had done this in my organization, I’d have serious issues as a Software Architect.
Also, the Developer Community for Visual Studio is extremely slow or even broken, it’s constantly timing out. Perhaps, there are too many bugs raised per minute after this update.
Thank you, Federico. We appreciate the patience.
We’re looking into the Android issues and intend to update our release notes. We’re working to resolve the issues as quickly as we can.
With regard to the slow-down in the Developer Community, we’re actively looking into it and it looks like we should have an understanding of the problem.
I wonder, do they even do the most basic testing on this before pushing it out?
I can definitively feel the difference in speed that great. I got some strange behaviour when renaming files I donāt know what Iam doing but it turn its doesnāt rename file the good fileā¦ otherwise Iam waiting for hot reload and code cleanup on save and think itās 2 quick win
Good job
Thanks for the comments, @Emmanuel – could you please submit this as a new issue on our Developer Community site and we can help troubleshoot? We’ve heard mention of badness with file renames in a few random cases, but it’s hard to reproduce and we’re trying to track it down.
Bugs related to android projects.
1. New VS sometimes crashing when trying to run and connect debugger to android emulator.
2. For me I can’t even open Device Manager window. I click the button and nothing happens
3. After some period of time working with android project, i mean many times of building/cleaning/running/managing resources, VS starts thinking and freezing on every action. It significantly break down performance. Restart of VS helps. I’ve been facing with this bug since VS 2019. It seems that the problem somewhere in background android resource compiler/generator and it’s cache.
4. No suggestion when editing android xml layout files
5. Xml android layout editor. Doesn’t show rendered layout. Always see the error. And i can’t see how to show editor and UI layout panels next to each other. VS2019 has this feature
6. Android manifest editor broken
7. Minor thing. Why you always show me F# interactive panel on start? How can i hide it permanently? How can i also close Hot Reload and other panels to not see them again after restart?
Finally nice performance on m1 max chip. But still it’s not event close to Rider IDE.
How Xamarin and Microsoft with so huge budget and resources can’t create fast and stable IDE on own technologies and for own products and frameworks? On other side jetbrains can…
I’m having the issue when running and debugging to android device from the VS for Mac 2022 (Version 17.0 build 6509).
I really need C++ in Visual Studio 2022 for Mac OS! Please add C++ support to the next version of Visual Studio 2022.
I agree, please add C++.
Super fast, great job! š
Thanks for the visual studio preview 2022 for Mac. It works great. I don’t see the MAUI project tools in this preview version. Is there any plan to add the MAUI tools support to this VS2022 preview for Mac, any time in near feature. It would be great if we get that support sooner.
Rosetta still needs to be installed first, which is not “native”ļ¼
Any timeline on when Azure Func v4 with .NET 6 will be supported? It is listed as a known issue here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2022/mac-release-notes-preview#–known-issues
It won’t let me go to .Net higher than 4.8 even though I have 6 installed. FAIL.
Great news!!!
When will Microsoft’s Premier Development Studio (Visual Studio) on Microsoft’s Premier Supported OS (Windows) be moving to .NET 6 as well, so we can all realize the performance and benefits that .NET 6 brings?
Thanks
Danial
Can I get VS2022 for Mac Preview 5 ? I’ve already installed Preview 6 but I cannot create any solution because Package Console prompts “Not connected” and Build Failed. I hope to get Preview 5 because I need it to go on working on my project.
i really need C/C++ .please support them to the next update.