Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 7

Jordan Matthiesen

Visual Studio 2022 for Mac 17.0 Preview 7 is here and continues our focus on addressing top issues and driving forward to a high-quality GA (general availability) release. In addition to many fixes, this release brings back Xamarin mobile tooling as a supported experience and introduces Azure Functions V4 tooling which supports running on .NET 6 & M1 processors. This work continues from prior previews where we’ve moved the UI of the IDE to fully native macOS UI, running natively on Apple’s M1 (ARM 64) processor, and migrated the IDE to run on top of .NET 6. Get the latest release now by using the Visual Studio > Check for Updates… menu in the product, or download it directly:

Fixing top issues & reducing crashes

The focus of the Visual Studio 2022 v17.0 preview releases going forward is quality. We are addressing top customer reported issues on the Developer Community site as well as other top crashes that prevent developers from using and having a positive experience with the IDE. Some of the top issues fixed in this release include:

You can see the exhaustive list of fixes in the release notes.

Porting the last of the preference screens to native macOS UI

In our Preview 6 release we reached a milestone of porting the last of the major IDE UI to native macOS UI. In this preview release, we’ve finished porting the last of the Preference screens:

  • C# Code Formatting (Found in Preferences > Source Code > Code Formatting > C# source code)
  • Snippets (Found in Preferences > Text Editor > Code Snippets)
  • Behavior panels for CSS, HTML, and JSON (Found in Preferences > Text Editor > Behavior)
  • External Tools (Found in Preferences > Environment > External Tools)

The new code formatting dialog in Preview 7
The newly ported Code Formatting dialog in Visual Studio for Mac preferences.

You can learn more about the motivations of this move to native UI, by reading our Preview 1 release post. As you try out these preference screens, please let us know if you have any issues – use the Help > Report a Problem… menu in the product to share your feedback.

Support for serverless app dev on .NET 6 using Azure Functions V4

New to this release is support for developing applications using Azure Functions V4, which enables you to develop serverless apps using .NET 6. Adding support for Azure Functions V4 also enables Azure Functions development on M1 (arm64)-based processors, which required the arm64 .NET 6 SDK. In this release you can use Azure Functions V4 on Intel or M1-based machines. Azure Functions V2 & V3 projects can be opened and developed on Intel-based processors; support for creating V2 or V3 projects on Intel devices will return in an upcoming preview release.

Xamarin mobile tooling is back and ready for your feedback

In this release, we’re once again ready to get your feedback on the Xamarin mobile tooling in Visual Studio for Mac. Previously, in the Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 6 release, we made the tough call that Xamarin tooling wasn’t ready for feedback while we were addressing known issues.

Preview 7 comes with nearly 50 bug fixes for the mobile workloads, ranging from fundamentals like fixing Android emulator creation to small papercuts like error message updates! Much of this work has been focused on Xamarin support so you can switch to 17.0 seamlessly when it goes GA, but we’re making progress with .NET MAUI too. Although we don’t plan to ship .NET MAUI support with 17.0 GA, we are making great progress towards the MAUI experience and will continue to provide updates as we get closer.

Please keep sharing your feedback

We want your help making Visual Studio 2022 for Mac the best developer experience. Your feedback continues to inform our plans – after you’ve had a chance to try out this preview, let us know what you think by taking the Visual Studio for Mac Preview survey:

Also, if you’re interested in receiving updates directly from our team, join our Preview Newsletter – we’ll share updates on what’s new and share 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.

 

21 comments

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  • Michael Argentini 0

    This release is looking really good! I can even build and debug an Umbraco 9 CMS instance on an M1 Mac. One issue that’s killing me though: the keyboard is jacked. No matter what keyboard settings I use, and even if I wipe all settings and start from scratch, I can’t use the keyboard to select text in the editor (e.g. shift+down/up). Sometimes it works when I use a variation of this like shift+option+down/up, but not always. Any thoughts on this issue?

    • Jordan MatthiesenMicrosoft employee 0

      Thank you for trying out the release and sharing your feedback right away, we really appreciate it, @Michael. We did some massive work on keyboard shortcuts in this release and really want to make sure this are in good shape. I’m not able to replicate this issue with a quick test, but that only means we need a few more details.

      If you haven’t yet, could you please report this issue using the Help > Report a Problem… menu in the IDE? That will give us some useful build details and when you include log files it can help with troubleshooting. A few questions we’d ask:
      * What editor/language are you using when the keyboard shortcuts fail?
      * If you do find a consistent order of pressing the keys that fails, please mention that in repro steps.
      * What language/locale are you using in macOS and in Visual Studio for Mac if it’s different from the OS setting?

      • Michael Argentini 0

        Done. Hopefully the submitted info will help 🙂

        • Jordan MatthiesenMicrosoft employee 0

          Great, thank you! It looks like there’s an issue with the feedback/work item system, so the item doesn’t show on the public website yet, but I did find it in the backend system. I asked a question there that I’ll share here, in case you don’t get the notification – what keyboard layout are you using in macOS System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources? We’re actively investigating what’s going on here.

  • prodbyjonny 0

    It’s always exciting when there is a new preview! It’s like a birthday present. I hope you guys will make good progress on maui support i cant wait to try it!
    keep up your great work!

  • Daniel Dudek 0

    Not sure if this is a bug, but after installing Preview 6 and now 7 on M1 it does not have appropriate access by default to save files. Although it is working for some files and not for others (mostly have issues with xaml). Only after going to system settings and giving full access, it works fine.

    • Kyle WhiteMicrosoft employee 0

      Thank you for trying out the previews and sharing your feedback. I haven’t seen this issue but it might be specific to your environment. If you haven’t already, would you please report this issue using the Help > Report a Problem… menu in the IDE? This will give us environment details and the logs. It would be good to also include:
      * If your macOS user is an admin or standard user
      * The location ‘Visual Studio (Preview).app’ is installed on your machine
      * The location on your disk is the project/solution giving you the problem
      * Exactly when you see the dialog (is it only when you save a xaml file?)

  • mail4roman 0

    Hello Jordan, there is problem with keyboard shortcuts in this version. By default many basic shortcuts doesn’t work (like text selection, save file, quit, even just simple navigation character left/right). After removing those binding in preferences some of them are starting to work and some of them are working only one time, like saving file for example. I’ve tried everything, even clean installing with wiping all settings.
    Is there any way to install previous version? This version is not usable for me. Thanks in advance!

    Update.
    Also noticed that after relaunching IDE, keyboard shortcuts are resetting sometimes.

      • mail4roman 0

        Done.

        Input Sources is English -> ABC

        Is there any way to rollback to Preview 6?

        • Damon Abdiel 0

          It’s very hard to work without shortcuts, I need a downgrade too

      • mail4roman 0

        Hi Jordan, so is there a way to rollback? As I understand the fix will be only in a next preview version and it could take for a month. Don’t want return back to the 2019 version, the preview 6 was working fine for me 🙂

  • Steve 0

    Does this release support .NET 6 based iOS projects?

  • JMR Pineda 0

    Hi, nice work, but due the latest keyboard issues, how can we/I downgrade the visual studio for mac to the previous “preview” version?

    thanks in advance!

  • Jeffrey Absalom 0

    Any idea when extensions will be supported?

  • Jacob Hatwell 0

    I was excited to try this out given stated Xamarin Mobile development support. Sadly I wasn’t able to successfully debug my Xamarin.Android / Xamarin.iOS apps on my M1 Macbook Air 🙁

    Does this release support native Xamarin app development, or only Xamarin.Forms? It would be good to know when we can expect full support.

    iOS behavior:
    Crashes immediately on deployment

    iOS output:

    error HE0042: Could not launch the app 'skydrop.skydrop' on the device 'iOS 15.2 (19C51) - iPhone 13': Application launch for 'skydrop.skydrop' did not return a valid pid nor a launch error.

    Android behavior:
    Hangs on splash screen, “Could not connect to the debugger” modal shown in VS 2022 17.0 Preview

    Android output:

    Forwarding debugger port 8861
    Detecting existing process
    > am start -a "android.intent.action.MAIN" -n "to.hns.skydrop/crc642be9c5fe75a2b84f.SplashActivity"
    > Starting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cmp=to.hns.skydrop/crc642be9c5fe75a2b84f.SplashActivity }
    
    User assembly '/Users/jh/Documents/source/SkyDrop/src/SkyDrop.iOS/bin/iPhone/Debug/SkyDrop.iOS.exe' is missing. Debugger will now debug all code, not just user code.
    [to.hns.skydrop] Late-enabling -Xcheck:jni
    [USNET] USNET: appName: to.hns.skydrop
    [CompatibilityChangeReporter] Compat change id reported: 171979766; UID 10525; state: DISABLED
    [GraphicsEnvironment] ANGLE Developer option for 'to.hns.skydrop' set to: 'default'
    [GraphicsEnvironment] App is not on the allowlist for updatable production driver.
    [LoadedApk] LoadedApk::makeApplication() appContext.mOpPackageName=to.hns.skydrop appContext.mBasePackageName=to.hns.skydrop
    [NetworkSecurityConfig] No Network Security Config specified, using platform default
    [NetworkSecurityConfig] No Network Security Config specified, using platform default
    [monodroid] Creating public update directory: `/data/user/0/to.hns.skydrop/files/.__override__`
    [to.hns.skydrop] Attempt to remove non-JNI local reference, dumping thread
    [monodroid-debug] Trying to initialize the debugger with options: --debugger-agent=transport=dt_socket,loglevel=0,address=127.0.0.1:8861,server=y,embedding=1
    
  • mani kantha 0

    Thank you for the update! It was looking great. I was updated to Preview 7 & tried to create a new Maui project. The project was created but the alert icon appearing “.NET 6 Xamarin and MAUI projects are not supported with this version of Visual Studio. The included target frameworks are not supported: net6.0-android| net6.0-ios| net6.0-maccatalyst”. Is there any way to overcome this one? (or) Can I rollback to Preview 6 Anyhow?

  • edoust 0

    Hi, using this update I am not able to build Mac Catalyst projects anymore (net6.0-maccatalyst) that worked in the earlier version of VS. The other Xamarin targets also don’t work. Error Message: “.NET 6 Xamarin projects are not supported with this version of Visual Studio”.

    I can’t use this version of Visual Studio and neither can I downgrade to an earlier version. Please provide an update that fixes this issue or provide a workaround, any help would be appreciated!

  • Th@nh H@ Le 0

    Hi, this version is prettier and faster than the old one. I want Visual Studio 2022 for Mac support Node.js and Python. I hope Visual Studio for Mac has similar features on the Windows version.

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