Visual Studio 2022 Preview 4 is now available!

Mads Kristensen

We are excited to announce the fourth preview release of Visual Studio 2022! With Preview 4, there are more new capabilities on the themes of personal and team productivity, modern development, and constant innovation. In this blog, we’re highlighting a few of the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2022 Preview 4. We’d love for you to download it, try it out, and join us in shaping the next major release of Visual Studio with your feedback.

 

Personal & team productivity

A focus area for Visual Studio 2022 is improving the scalability and performance of Visual Studio. In previous blog posts, we’ve talked about how our move to 64bit has led to significant improvements in scalability. In Preview 4, we’ve focused on improving the performance of several key features. For example, find in files is now as much as 3x faster when searching large solutions such as Orchard Core.

Find in files performance comparison between VS2019 and VS2022

Other scenarios where we’ve improved performance include C++ IntelliSense performance improvements with a ~12% speedup for semantic colorization, optimizations to symbol database processing, and an almost 2x speedup for expanding C++ items in the solution explorer. The performance team is planning a blog dedicated to performance improvements, so stay tuned.

The Preview 4 release also has a number of improvements for debugging. From updates to the attach to process dialog where you can now select processes by using a window picker. From updates to the new external source feature, which make it easier to load symbols for libraries outside your project, to new features like dependent breakpoints, for configuring additional breakpoints after another breakpoint is first hit. This can make debugging code in common paths (like a game loop or a utility API) much easier as a breakpoint in those functions can be configured to enable only if the function is invoked from a specific part of your application.

Setting a dependent breakpoint
Setting a dependent breakpoint

 

Developing modern apps

In Preview 4, there’s a big update for the Blazor and Razor editors, addressing the issues in Preview 3 that we’re reported to us – thank you! Along with fixes, there are new capabilities for hot reload in ASP.NET Core – including hot reload on file save and applying changes to CSS files live!

Setting a dependent breakpoint
Hot reload for CSS

 

Innovation at your fingertips

In Visual Studio 2022, we are continuing to add new C++ sanitization features to help you write reliable and secure C++ code. In Visual Studio 2019, we started to add sanitization features to MSVC with AddressSanitizer (ASan) for Windows with MSVC | C++ Team Blog (microsoft.com). With Preview 4, you can now use libFuzzer with the MSVC compiler, so any binaries you compile with MSVC can now be fuzz tested by libFuzzer. The C++ team has a blog planned that will go into more details on how to use libFuzzer. In the meantime, you can find documentation on Microsoft Docs.

If you’ve ever started a new project by first creating code on your local machine and then found it a pain to get that code in a Git repo, Preview 4 has the solution for you. You can now create an Azure DevOps repository from the updated create Git repository experience. Visual Studio will create a new Git repository and push it to Azure DevOps with a single click.

Publish local repository to a remote
Publish local repository to a remote

With Preview 4, we’re updating several of the top-voted personalization suggestions from our developer community. One of your suggestions was color-coding your tabs. You can find the setting to colorize document tabs by project under Tools > Options > Environment > Tabs and Windows.

Screenshot of Visual Studio with color coded tabs
Color coded tabs in the horizontal document well

 

Color coded tabs in the vertical document well
Color coded tabs in the vertical document well

Color-coded tabs help you organize files visually by providing an extra visual clue, which is especially useful for files that share the same name, e.g. program.cs. We’re excited to share this first release of color-coded tabs with you, and we’re even more excited to hear your feedback on the visual look and understanding what scenarios would improve your workflow. If you’ve given it a try, please take a few minutes to share your feedback in this anonymous survey!

In Visual Studio 2022, we are improving our theming capabilities to help you personalize your environment. We are teaming up with community theme authors to convert some Visual Studio Code themes to work in Visual Studio, adding more flexibility in the Visual Studio family of products. Winter is Coming is one of our first custom themes, now available in the Marketplace! Stay tuned this week for more new themes coming soon.

Winter is Coming theme from the Visual Studio Extension Marketplace
Winter is Coming theme from the Visual Studio Extension Marketplace

 

Summary

The features above are just a few examples of the direction we’re going with Visual Studio 2022. There are a lot more features to be explored in Preview 4. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see more blog posts coming for many of the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2022. If you can’t wait, head on over to the release notes to learn more about what’s new in Preview 4.

Take part!

You can install Preview 4 side-by-side with Visual Studio 2019, and it’s free for anyone to use while in preview. We want your help making Visual Studio 2022 the best developer experience for you, and we are excited for you to try out all the new productivity enhancements. We encourage you to download and use the preview just like you would use Visual Studio 2019. We appreciate your time in providing feedback via Developer Community, reporting a problem, and taking part in surveys.

 

58 comments

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  • Joris Kommeren 0

    Aww so no git history for files in submodules? 😕 I’ve been giving a lot of feedback on that..

    • Johan Benschop 0

      👋

    • Taysser GherfalMicrosoft employee 0

      Thanks for the feedback Joris. We are aware of this limitation and we agree with you in that it should work. Will do our best to prioritize a fix.

  • Siddharth Abbineni 0

    Is it now possible to do a hot reload for a .Net Core HOSTED Blazor WASM solution? (have the server build and serve the blazor client) ?

    • Daniel RothMicrosoft employee 0

      Yes, Hot Reload should work with an ASP.NET Core host Blazor WebAssembly app as long you’re not debugging. We haven’t enabled Hot Reload for Blazor WebAssembly apps yet when the debugger is attached. If you’re hitting issues with Hot Reload and Blazor WebAssembly, please submit a Visual Studio Feedback issue with details about the problem you’re seeing.

  • Glenn Altemose 0

    Hmmm, post the latest Xamarin.iOS update tied to this, all of a sudden I can’t deploy to iOS with the error ” Error loading ‘obj/iPhone/Debug/AppManifest.plist’: Failed to parse PList data type: “. The file in question is completely empty.

    • Péter Tófalvy 0

      Same problem for me.
      I’ve just created an empty mobile project and I cannot try it out on ios simulator due to this error message.
      Is there any solution or workaround for this?

      • Glenn Altemose 0

        I’m glad to see it’s not just me! Unfortunately I have not found a workaround.

      • Brice Lambson 0

        Looks like this got reported as xamarin/xamarin-macios#12735 and will be fixed in a future preview.

      • Corey Jensen 0

        I saw elsewhere that the resolution would be included in the next Preview release, which seems to be the third Monday of each month… So hopefully that means Preview 5 on Oct 18th. I had no luck with a workaround either.

  • 刚 王 0

    maui workload ?

    • saint4eva 0

      Yes – an option for Mobile Workload

  • Bin Dong 0

    We had a post about the new vs extension development a week ago. Will the features in that post also be available in preview 4?

  • Michael Schoneman 0

    Dues this release include a go live license? If not, what’s the recommended way to build .NET 6 rc 1 apps?

    • Alexey Leonovich 0

      I have the same question. .NET 6.0-rc1 is “go live” so there should be an IDE with the same license type. VS 2022 is still in preview, VS 2019 16.11.x is stable but Microsoft team again and again says that it is not supported (but FYI you can still build and debug .NET 6.0-rc1 applications (at least console, WinForms and WPF) – just enable preview SDKs in VS2019 settings and manually set TFM in .csproj file). You can upvote there on Github issue page or on a developercommunity topic.

    • David Ramel 0

      Release notes:

      “This release is not ‘go-live’ and not intended for use on production computers or for creating production code.”

      • Alexey Leonovich 0

        So again – what’s the recommended and go-live supported way to build .NET 6 rc 1 apps (as soon as .NET 6 rc 1 has go-live license)?

  • BÙI TẤN LÂN 0

    Analysis Services, Integration Services, or Reporting Services projects is not exist in this preview. Can you port default theme of vscode?

    • Grace TaylorMicrosoft employee 0

      Hi there! We’re working on some new custom theming experiences, stay tuned for more details tomorrow!

  • Stevie White (Dragnilar) 0

    @Mads

    Speaking of themes… are there any plans to update either the Color Theme Editor or the Color Theme Designer for Visual Studio 2022?

    I tried updating the VSIX files for them so they can install in VS2022 but it looks like they need some additional work before they can run in VS2022 (you get ERRORS! :D).

    • Grace TaylorMicrosoft employee 0

      Hi Stevie, we are working on improving the theming experience! We’re aware that the existing tools don’t work for Visual Studio 2022 and we’re looking to change that! Please stay tuned for more updates.

  • PandaSharp 0

    Nice! Finally some love for Azure DevOps

  • Santtu Syrjälä 0

    Updated from previous preview and now it opens only empty solution. No errors no nothing, just empty Visual Studio 2022 window with no projects visible. Tried to delete .vs directory but that did not help, suggestions?

  • Paulo Pinto 0

    Still no tooling for IDL and XAML C++ that comes close to the C++/CX developer experience, but hey we now have color tabs!

  • King David Consulting LLC 0

    I ended up wasting half of my day on the issue with projects or solutions not loading due to default options being “Require a trust decision before opening content”. I guess the team missed the UI pop up for this. If such a feature introduced it should be unchecked in my opinion. I am using the preview daily with my production apps.

    Tools --> Enviromint --> Trust Settings --> unchecked "Require a trust decision before opening content"

    The strange this is that I upgraded yesterday and haven’t had a problem.

    My two cents!

  • Jonathan Westfall 0

    Is there a way to go back to an older preview? Preview four broke stuff with opening databases with SQl Server Object Explorer.
    I even opened my project with a Visual Studios 2019 version to see if I didn’t do something and in 2019 it can be opened, but in the new 2022 preview 4 I get unable to load one or more of the requested types when trying to open the SQl Server Object Explorer when using Entity framework.

    Is there an archive for older previews to download?

    • Ruben RiosMicrosoft employee 0

      Hi Jonathan! Could you please create a feedback ticket to track this issue?

      • Jonathan Westfall 0

        I can create a feedback ticket for it, but where can we download preview 3 version.
        I see a lot of people asking, but no one has responded properly to us about where we can download the older version.

        • Died Liu 0

          I need downgrade to preview 3.1 too, like lot other people does.
          But Dev don’t care about it.

    • Glenn Altemose 0

      I have the same question for a different reason (Xamarin iOS build issues in 4 that were not present in 3.0 or 3.1)…

  • Ryan Buening 0

    > We are teaming up with community theme authors to convert some Visual Studio Code themes to work in Visual Studio

    Hopefully the One Dark Pro theme is included 😀

  • danial hughes 0

    Any news on the Winforms & WPF designers?

    • Olia GavryshMicrosoft employee 0

      For WinForms designer for .NET Core/.NET 5/.NET 6 projects we are working on improving performance and reliability and enabling various data scenarios. The new designer already supports all controls that we were intending to bring to Core and third-party control vendors are also actively working on bringing their components to .NET 5/6. Many of them are already available.

      For WPF designer we recently enabled new features such as Quick Actions (the light bulb next to a control in the designer) that allows you to quickly change the most commonly used properties and XAML Live Preview – a Visual Studio window that shows your running application inside VS with additional tools for developing pixel-perfect UIs such as rulers and info tips.

  • 高攀 朱 0

    A little issue, show message “Feature ‘Document highlights’ is currently unavailable due to an internal error” on the top.

  • Christian Andersen 0

    I think there are still some issues. Doing blazor development, my CPU usage is 80-100% on a ryzen 5800x.

    • Daniel RothMicrosoft employee 0

      Hi Christian. Thanks for letting us know! If you haven’t already, please submit a Visual Studio Feedback issue using the Report a Problem feature so that we can investigate.

  • Vassily Godunov 0

    Generics now conflict on overloads. So NLog lambda calls don’t work.
    I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s just the way it is.
    Be careful.

  • Milan 0

    Hello, where can I download preview 3?

    Npgsql will not release RC1 until sometime next week at best and now I am really stuck because .net rc1 and npgsql preview 7 or nightly rc1 are not compatible. I didn’t know that before update. Now I have to revert to .net 6 preview 7, but I also need VS 2022 preview 3. How can I do that.

  • Kaif Shaikh 0

    Can I use My Visual Studio 2019 License in 2022 Version

  • Brian Peal 0

    Not working from last preview version when upgrading my project. First several class libraries went missing in my usings, no biggie, just right click and add them back. Big issue though, is I ran the application and now I get this error in Chrome:

    Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘offsetWidth’)
    at n.setActiveBorder (sf-tab-19ec1c.min.js:1)
    at n.refreshActiveBorder (sf-tab-19ec1c.min.js:1)
    at n.refreshActElePosition (sf-tab-19ec1c.min.js:1)

    I use Syncfusion so I am guessing that is their javascript files. this is a snippet of the code:

    var l = sf.base.isNullOrUndefined(o) ? this.tbItems.offsetWidth : o.offsetWidth;
    0 !== l ? sf.base.setStyleAttribute(a, {
    left: t.offsetLeft + “px”,
    right: l – (t.offsetLeft + t.offsetWidth) + “px”
    }) : sf.base.setStyleAttribute(a, {
    left: “auto”,
    right: “auto”
    })

    I will log ticket with Syncfusion, but note this worked just fine on the last preview version just before I upgraded.

  • jorge enrique rodriguez marcos 0

    good afternoon I hope you can access visual studio 32 bits

  • Andreas Saurwein 0

    Still not understanding why MS spent time on developing a new default font for VS instead of improving on the perfectly good Consolas font. The Cascadia font is harder to read in small sizes (like the VS context tool tips) and takes up more horizontal space. Nice that its has ligatures and what not, but was is so hard to add this to Consolas?

  • Died Liu 0

    Does someone have VS2022 preview 3.1 installer link ?
    After upgrade to preview 4.1 it create StackoverflowException and can’t fix.
    I need downgrade.

  • Lakra 4k 0

    Whats is the official day of launch?

  • Day Chung 0

    WOW! 2022 is coming!

  • Jeremy Fegenbush 0

    Will you there be an option to develop Powershell specific code in VS 2022?

  • 刚 王 0

    no template could be found with the identity microsoft.aspnetcore.components.razor component

  • Axel Hörteborn 0

    Does anyone knows if these features will be fixed before the launch 8th of November (or have a solution how to fix them/better address the issues)?

    Auto complete delete prior written function names and everything afterwards:
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69387035/auto-complete-delete-prior-function-names-etc

    The possibility to select Python environment for the intellisense?
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69356513/how-to-select-the-python-interpreter-for-intellisense-in-visual-studio-2022-prev

  • Milos musicki 0

    SSIS projects can not be created in VS 2022 preview. I installed the Data storage and processing component with SSDT included, but no difference.
    I wish Microsoft would stop pushing this way of installing SSIS Extension when it does not work, or at least fix it, so it works.
    It didn’t work in VS 2017 (had to be installed separately), nor in 2019 (had to still add an extension for SSIS after installing SSDT), and it does not work in VS 2022 either, no matter what MS says.
    I would like to see a video of someone actually installing VS 2022, and creating an SSIS project in VS 2022.

  • Alice Hayden 0

    I clicked on Visual Studio 2022 Preview download button, but I keep on seeing version 17.0. where can I get 17.1 with MAUI included?

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