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March 15th, 2022

Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 7

Jordan Matthiesen

Senior Product Manager

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:

Download Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 7

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:

Fixes for numerous Xamarin mobile tooling issues (see below)
Keyboard shortcuts not working on es-ES keyboard layout
Program execution doesn’t stop on breakpoints when debugging a library
Numerous stability/crashing issues

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:

Download Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 7

Share your feedback

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.

Author

Jordan Matthiesen

Senior Product Manager

Jordan is a senior product manager working on the .NET team - focused on improving the lives of .NET devs building solutions that use AI. When not at his computer creating tools for developers, you'll find him hanging out with his family, playing guitar, or working in the garden.

21 comments

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Th@nh H@ Le March 25, 2022 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.
edoust March 20, 2022 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...
Read more
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!

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mani kantha March 18, 2022 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?

Jacob Hatwell March 18, 2022 · Edited

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:
<code>

Android behavior:
Hangs on splash screen, "Could not connect to the debugger" modal shown...

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

Jeffrey Absalom March 17, 2022 0

Any idea when extensions will be supported?
JMR Pineda March 17, 2022 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!
Steve March 17, 2022 0

Does this release support .NET 6 based iOS projects?
mail4roman March 16, 2022 · Edited 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?...
Read more
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.

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- Jordan Matthiesen Author March 16, 2022 0
  
  Thanks for the feedback, @mail4roman – this looks like the same issue mentioned by @Michael Argentini earlier in the comments. Could you please add your vote to this item and add a comment with any other details like what keyboard layout you’re using in macOS System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources?
  
  https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Many-keyboard-shortcuts-dont-work/1693870?space=41
  - mail4roman March 18, 2022 · Edited 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 🙂
  - mail4roman March 16, 2022 · Edited 0
    
    Done.
    
    Input Sources is English -> ABC
    
    Is there any way to rollback to Preview 6?
  - Damon Abdiel March 16, 2022 0
    
    It’s very hard to work without shortcuts, I need a downgrade too
Daniel Dudek March 16, 2022 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 White March 16, 2022 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...
  Read more
  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?)
  
  Read less
prodbyjonny March 16, 2022 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!