Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Release Candidate

Jordan Matthiesen

Dominic Nahous

On behalf of our whole team, I’m beyond excited to announce that the Visual Studio 2022 for Mac 17.0 Release Candidate (RC) is ready for you to download now and includes a go-live license that allows you to develop in production environments.

Visual Studio for Mac IDE with a file list on the left, code editor in the center, and Git Changes window on the right. The Git changes window shows a staged file and a commit comment of "Adding support for unsubscribing from podcasts."
Visual Studio 2022 for Mac with the new Git Changes window

A faster, more fluid IDE for everyone

This release swaps out the front-end UI of the IDE with a fully native macOS UI, replacing our previous architecture that was made up of a combination of UI technologies. We also replaced the IDE’s backend by moving to run it on .NET 6. The combination of these two major changes results in a smoother UI experience. You’ll see this throughout Visual Studio for Mac, whether you’re coding in the IDE or laying out your tool windows and workspace in a way that is perfect for you.

Along with our work to move to native macOS UI, the IDE also now fully supports native macOS accessibility tooling like VoiceOver and Voice Control. Visual Studio for Mac will now behave more consistently with the macOS accessibility experience and will be able to take advantage of new OS features, such as the Full Keyboard Access feature introduced in macOS Monterey.

Visual Studio for Mac showing macOS VoiceOver describing the Git Changes window
macOS VoiceOver describing contents of the new Git Changes window

 

Native support for Apple’s M1 processor

Visual Studio for Mac can now take advantage of the raw performance from Apple’s M1 (ARM64) processor, thanks to the native arm64 support provided by .NET 6. Actions like loading large solutions are up to 50% faster than in Visual Studio 2019 for Mac running on M1 processors.

Video showing a comparison of solution load time on a Mac with an M1 processor. Showing the solution loading in 12 seconds on Visual Studio 2022 for Mac versus. 23 seconds in Visual Studio 2019 for Mac.
Comparison of solution load performance on a Mac with an Apple M1 processor.

Building modern applications using .NET 6

With this release you can build ASP.NET Core, Cloud, and console applications using .NET 6 and C# 10. Azure Functions V4 is also now supported, so you can develop your serverless applications on top of .NET 6.

A C# minimal API app that prints Hello, World when opened via URL
Writing a minimal API with C# 10

.NET MAUI tooling: Coming soon to v17.1

.NET MAUI tooling will not be supported in Visual Studio 2022 for Mac v17.0. In an upcoming Visual Studio 2022 for Mac v17.1 release, you’ll also be able to build mobile applications using .NET 6 and .NET MAUI. .NET MAUI RC is out and the team is getting ready for GA! You’ll be able to open .NET MAUI projects in the preview releases of Visual Studio for Mac, and the team will add more .NET MAUI tooling support throughout the summer!

More productivity tooling from Visual Studio

Finally, this release focuses on improving your daily development experience by enabling a few familiar features from Visual Studio (on Windows) such as the Git Changes window, tool window drag and drop, and subword navigation.

Git Changes

Using the new Git Changes window, you can easily view files you’ve modified, added, or removed in your solutions under Git version control.

The Git Changes window in Visual Studio for Mac, enabling the creating of commits in Git version control.
A new Git Changes window for reviewing and committing your work

 

Tool Window Drag and Drop

As part of the move to native macOS UI in Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, we’ve updated our tool window drag & drop layout support to provide the same visual cues as Visual Studio (on Windows).  Now when you drag a tool window, you’ll see on-screen icons that show you where the window can be docked.

Visual Studio 2022 for Mac with a file list (solution window) docked on the right side of the IDE. The window is then dragged and dropped to dock on the left side.
Moving the solution window from the right-side of the IDE to the left-side.

In Visual Studio, tool windows are the small panes on the edges of your IDE like the solution/file list, Git changes window, document outline, etc. You can rearrange these windows by clicking and dragging on their titles and then “docking” them to another side of the IDE. You can also auto-hide them so they show only on hover of your mouse.

Subword Navigation

A great new feature coming to the editor in this release is subword navigation; a feature recently introduced into Visual Studio 2022 running on Windows. Using the string “HelloWorld” as an example, when you use the Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow and Ctrl+Alt+Right Arrow shortcuts the cursor will move between the subwords “Hello” and “World”. Making it easier to move between or select these subwords in your source.

A text editor showing the code "public static CatalogBaseURL" and moving through the words Catalog Base and URL via keyboard.
Navigating subwords in the C# editor.

Hundreds of bug fixes and many smaller improvements, like new code refactorings, were also added in this release – you can read all about them in the release notes.

Share your thoughts & feedback

We need your help to ensure that Visual Studio 2022 for Mac can replace Visual Studio 2019 for Mac. Your feedback is crucial to helping make sure this is the fastest and most productive release yet. After you’ve had a chance to try out this RC release, please let us know what you think by taking the Visual Studio for Mac Preview survey:

Please share your thoughts in our Visual Studio for Mac Preview survey, and keep sending those suggestions or problem reports! 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.

24 comments

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  • Brendan Carroll 0

    Great progress but it’s hard to believe how far off MAUI support has slipped.

  • Jacob Hatwell 0

    Good progress on Xamarin Native. I still get this error deploying to iOS simulator on M1 Mac, and something similar happens when deploying to Android Emulator (created via Android Studio)

    error HE0042: Could not launch the app 'bundleidentifier on the device 'iOS 15.4 (19E240) - iPhone 13 Pro': Application launch for 'bundleidentifier' did not return a valid pid nor a launch error.
  • Alex TitarenkoMicrosoft employee 0

    Hi Jordan and Dominic,
    You can’t claim full support of Apple Silicon if you can’t install VS without Rosetta 2. Please fix the VS Installer to not require Rosetta 2 before GA.

    • Claudiu Alex 0

      I think Rosetta 2 it is used for .Net Core 3.1 runtime installation, because it isn’t native for Apple M1.

    • Jordan MatthiesenMicrosoft employee 0

      Thanks for the feedback! We’re working on moving our installer to run natively on Apple Silicon as well, but it’s not ready just yet.

  • Aditee Verma 0

    The git changes view looks great, I was waiting for this. For the next iteration if it could be made more rich by adding all the features available for windows like pull from etc… I still have not figured out if we can pull data from other branches in visual studio for mac so I always have to use the terminal.

  • Zach Smith 0

    It seems Mojave support was dropped with this release. Could this be addressed? Is this permanent? Back to the 2019 version, once again!

    • Claudiu Alex 0

      Mac.
      Supported Operating Systems

      Visual Studio 2022 for Mac is supported on the following 64-bit operating systems:
      macOS Monterey 12.0 or higher.
      macOS Big Sur 11.0 or higher.
      macOS Catalina 10.15 or higher.

    • Jordan MatthiesenMicrosoft employee 0

      Yes, this is our policy for operating system support. This follows along with Apple’s practices for shipping security updates for macOS as well.

      “As new major versions of macOS are made generally available, Microsoft will remove support for the oldest version and support the newest and previous two versions of macOS. Product functionality and feature availability may vary on older systems. For the best experience, use the latest version of macOS.”

  • 琳 李 0

    Great progress!

  • Claudiu Tomescu 0

    Great progress, however still a lot of issues when using HIDPI monitors. Font adjustment for Solution Explorer is still not available. The entire experience on HIDPI monitors is (still) very poor.

  • Vladyslav Strebkov 0

    And still don’t have SQL Server support

  • Kalixt 0

    MAUI support when ? 🙂

    • Chris Hansen 0

      According to the article:

      “.NET MAUI tooling will not be supported in Visual Studio 2022 for Mac v17.0. In an upcoming Visual Studio 2022 for Mac v17.1 release, you’ll also be able to build mobile applications using .NET 6 and .NET MAUI.”

  • Claudiu Alex 0

    When the final version of Visual studio for mac 2022 will be released ?

  • Mauer Andreas (BT/ET) 0

    Congratulations to the team. What is the build number of the RC and can you just update from the latest preview build to the RC or do you have to deinstall and reinstall? Does the RC version still says in the about info “Visual Studio for Mac Preview” 17.0 Preview (17.0 build 8754)

    Thanks, Andreas.

    • ruben ruvalcaba 0

      I have exactly the same question. I downloaded the RC from the post link, and it doesn’t mention RC, it just shows Preview is already installed.

  • 宾江 莫 0

    Visual Studio for Mac Preview 17.0 build 8754,macOS Big Sur 11.6.3
    NET SDK (x64)
    SDK: /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/6.0.202/Sdks
    SDK Version:
    6.0.202
    5.0.407
    5.0.302
    3.1.418
    3.1.414
    MSBuild SDK: /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/6.0.202/Sdks

    .NET Runtime (x64)
    Runtime : /usr/local/share/dotnet/dotnet
    Runtime Version:
    6.0.4
    5.0.16
    5.0.8
    3.1.24
    3.1.20

    I create a Web Application with C#, target framework is .NET 6.0, code nothing, building, report MSB 3971 error, can’t find “.NET Framework, Version=v6.0″。
    but I installed .net 6 SDK before install vs,and I try reinstall .net 6 after install vs.
    vs2022 for mac is first install, and I have vs 2019 for mac but can’t use .net 6

    How can I fix it?

  • Lei Zheng 0

    When will VS for MAC be updated to Visual Studio 2022 17.2 or Visual Studio 2022 17.1, and when will MAUI be available

  • Luiz Carlos Kolodziey 0

    Hi Jordan and Dominic.

    I’m facing an error in “Find in File” when “Find All” button is clicked. Appears to me a fullscreen grid with no result.
    The same behavior occurs in “Replace All”.
    And this problem started when I updated to RC, but actually I’m running RC2 build 8904, and my MacBook is a Pro 2019, intel chip.

    Thanks, Luiz Kolodziey

  • Erik Putrycz 0

    Do you guys have any plans to share the UI stack that was used in VS? I assume it is not MAUI since you mention native MacOS. I assume you got rid of the Xamarin GTK stack but would be curious to know what it got replaced with. There are not a lot of alternatives these days for native MacOS widgets in the dotnet world.

  • Kanagasubramanian Krishnamurthi 0

    Auto save and opening a file with single click are most expected features in Visual Studio Mac similar to Visual Studio Code.

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