Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
Featured posts
Announcing a free GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio
We're excited to announce an all new free plan for GitHub Copilot, available for everyone today in Visual Studio. All you need is a GitHub account. No trial. No...
Latest posts
Enhance Pull Request Reviews with In-Depth Feedback
Visual Studio 2022 has taken the pull request experience to the next level by making reviews interactive. We previously enabled viewing your pull request comments inline in your working files. Now, the latest update empowers you to add comments directly within the IDE, streamlining the review process. Now, pull request reviewers can conduct deep reviews with the navigational power of the IDE and stay in their focused environment. We heard from your feedback that the web experience for reviewing pull requests can only go so far. When you need to really understand your colleagues' proposed changes, it's best...
Find the IDE features you need with GitHub Copilot and Search
Ever find yourself needing to locate a specific menu item, command, or option in Visual Studio, but you don't know its name or location? Do you often struggle to find detailed instructions on using certain features effectively? Now, there’s a solution to get you the information you need right in the IDE. Visual Studio now makes it easy to access GitHub Copilot Chat from Feature Search (Ctrl+Q). Clicking “Ask Copilot” will send your query to GitHub Copilot Chat and get detailed responses, without leaving Visual Studio and search for docs online. This tool interprets the semantic meaning of your query,...
Boost your GitHub productivity with our new multi-account support!
Managing your GitHub identity in Visual Studio 2022 just got easier! Our latest update overhauls the GitHub account management experience and improves how you work with multiple accounts, especially for GitHub Copilot and version control scenarios. In this post, we'll detail how these changes will make your GitHub workflow smoother, from the moment you start using Visual Studio to your everyday coding. Onboarding Improvements The latest Visual Studio 2022 update streamlines your GitHub experience right from the very start. You can now Sign in with your GitHub account during the first launch experience: I...
Introducing automatic documentation comment generation in Visual Studio
We are excited to announce that Copilot is now automatically integrated into Visual Studio’s editor to help you generate doc comments for functions. This new feature aims to streamline your documentation process and enhance your coding experience. To access these updates, you will need a GitHub Copilot subscription. If you don’t already have GitHub Copilot, you can sign up for free here. AI doc comment generation If you have automatic doc comment generation enabled via your settings, you can simply type what would trigger your doc comment format (such as ///) and Copilot suggestions will automatically fill o...
New, Simpler Solution File Format
For years, you’ve worked with Visual Studio’s solution file (*.SLN) format, and while it’s a core part of your project organization, we know the experience hasn’t always been smooth. Whether you’ve been modifying, maintaining, or trying to resolve merge conflicts, it’s often felt more like a hassle than it should be. We understand your frustrations, and we’re here to talk about why it’s time for a change and how a new solution file format can make your life easier. The Challenges Despite being a critical element of the Visual Studio ecosystem, the existing solution file format has its share of drawbacks: ...
Make more sense of multithreaded debugging
Debugging complex programs often feels like navigating a labyrinth of threads and stack traces. The challenge of understanding thread behaviors and tracing issues can be daunting, leading to longer development times and increased frustration. But now, there's a solution that simplifies this process—introducing AI-powered thread summaries in Parallel Stacks Window with Visual Studio. To address these challenges, Visual Studio introduces two AI-powered features that make debugging more intuitive: thread summaries and app summarization. These enhancements bring clarity to your debugging workflow by providing con...
GPT-4o Copilot code completion model available now in Visual Studio public preview
We are excited to announce that the new GPT-4o Copilot code completion model is now available for GitHub Copilot users in Visual Studio starting in 17.14 Preview 2! This new model, based on GPT-4o mini, has undergone additional training on over 275,000 high-quality public repositories across more than 30 popular programming languages. As a result, developers can expect more accurate suggestions and better performance. Try it out now! For Visual Studio users who have yet to use GitHub Copilot, get started today! There’s even a free plan that includes 2,000 completions and 50 chats per month. You can sign up ...
Unlock Free Access to Cloud Academy: A New Benefit for Visual Studio Subscribers
I’m very excited to share some great news with you! Starting today, if you’re a Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise subscriber, you can get free access to Cloud Academy from QA—no trial, and no credit card required. This exclusive benefit is included with your Visual Studio subscription and provides 12 months of free access to Cloud Academy. Act fast—this is a limited-time offer. Just log in to the Visual Studio subscriptions portal at my.visualstudio.com and activate your free plan. What is Cloud Academy? Cloud Academy, now part of QA, is a premier learning platform that helps developers and IT pros m...
New Debugging and Profiling Features in Visual Studio (v17.13)
The latest Visual Studio update (v17.13) brings a strong set of debugging and profiling features designed to speed up troubleshooting, making it more efficient. With AI-driven features in this release, variable analysis and data inspection are smarter and more intuitive, and problems are easier to identify and debug. Profiling tool improvements also deliver better support and visualization for multi-process execution, native code, and async workflows, with clearer insights into performance bottlenecks. For a full list of debugger and diagnostics features in this release, check out the release notes. GitHub C...