In March 2026, developers came together at VS Live! Las Vegas for a full week of technical learning, hands-on exploration, and a lot of great conversations about where software development is headed next. From AI-assisted development to modern .NET, cloud-native apps, and developer productivity, one...
Azure MCP tools now ship built into Visual Studio 2022 — no extension required Azure MCP tools are now built into Visual Studio 2022 as part of the Azure development workload — no separate extension to find, install, or update. You can enable over 230 tools across 45 Azure services directly in GitHu...
We’ve all been there: a bug report lands in your inbox with a title like “App crashes sometimes” and zero reproduction steps. Your morning, which was supposed to be spent building new features, is now a forensic investigation. You’re setting scattershot breakpoints, staring at the call s...
Make Visual Studio floating windows work perfectly with PowerToys FancyZones. Flip one option to get independent windows, better snapping, and less friction.
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Bookmarks in Visual Studio have always been a simple, reliable feature. Many developers use them regularly, and over the years we’ve heard consistent feedback from those users. Bookmarks were useful, but there were a few core gaps that kept them from being as effective and relevant as they could be....
This month’s Visual Studio update gives you new ways to customize GitHub Copilot. Custom agents allow you to build specialized Copilot agents tailored to your team’s workflow, backed by the tools and knowledge sources that matter to your project. Alongside that, agent skills bring reusab...
A few months ago, I was talking with a developer who said something that stuck with me: “I love building apps. I just don’t love rebuilding the same UI controls over and over again.” That’s the reality for a lot of teams. You want to focus on your business logic, your architecture, your differenti...
Get the Inside Scoop on Visual Studio Subscriptions, Straight to Your Inbox A few weeks ago I was talking with a Visual Studio Enterprise subscriber. Seasoned .NET developer. Ships production code. Knows his stack inside and out. During the conversation I mentioned one of the training benefits inc...
When I first found Visual Studio Dev Essentials, it felt like discovering a hidden door in the developer toolkit world. I’d heard about free tools and cloud credits, but I wasn’t sure if it would really matter in day-to-day coding life. The short answer: it absolutely does. What struck me most was ...
Join us at GDC Festival of Gaming 2026 for a deep dive into Visual Studio, GitHub Copilot, PowerToys, and the Windows tools that speed up your daily dev workflow. We’ll show how these tools work together to boost productivity and cut friction across your entire inner loop. Session Title: Windo...
This month’s Visual Studio update continues our focus on helping you move faster and stay in flow, with practical improvements across AI assistance, debugging, testing, and modernization. Building on the momentum from January’s editor updates, the February release brings smarter diagnostics and targ...
Today we are releasing the first preview of the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) Build Tools version 14.51. This update, shipping in the latest Visual Studio 2026 version 18.4 Insiders release, introduces many C++23 conformance changes, bug fixes, and runtime performance improvements. Check out the release note...
When Visual Studio 2026 reached General Availability in November, it included several versions of the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) Build Tools: 14.50 (initially shipped with Visual Studio 2026) 14.44 (initially shipped with Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14) 14.29 (initially shipped with Visual Studio 2019 v...
With the launch of Visual Studio 2026, we announced a Private Preview of GitHub Copilot app modernization for C++, which reduces the cost of adopting the latest version of the MSVC Build Tools. We used the feedback we received from our many Private Preview participants to make improvements that bene...