April 26th, 2022

Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Release Candidate

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.

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.

Dominic Nahous
Senior Lead Program Manager

Dominic is a Senior Lead Program Manager for Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac. His team focuses on ensuring a delightful experience for developers on both Windows and Mac.

24 comments

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  • Kanagasubramanian Krishnamurthi

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

  • Erik Putrycz

    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.

  • Luiz Carlos Kolodziey

    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

  • Lei Zheng

    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

  • 宾江 莫 · Edited

    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...

    Read more
  • Mauer Andreas (BT/ET) · Edited

    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

      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.

  • Claudiu Alex

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

  • Kalixt

    MAUI support when ? 🙂

    • Chris Hansen

      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.”

  • Vladyslav Strebkov

    And still don’t have SQL Server support