Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 4

Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 4 release is here, and continues our move of the IDE to fully native macOS UI, fixes many top issues, and introduces new experiences for laying out your windows and searching your source.

You can read all about the latest changes in the release notes. Get the latest release using the Visual Studio > Check for Updates… menu, or download it now:

If you aren’t familiar with it, Visual Studio for Mac is our IDE for .NET developers building apps for the web and cloud using ASP.NET Core; mobile using .NET or Xamarin; and games using Unity. You can use the Community Edition for free, and it’s included in your Visual Studio Subscription (learn more on our website).

Customize window layouts to work for you

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.

In this Preview 4 release, we’ve brought the ability to drag and dock tool windows from Visual Studio 2019 for Mac and went one step further to make it similar to the Visual Studio experience on Windows. Now when you drag a tool window, you’ll see on-screen icons that show you where the window can be docked.

Moving the solution window from the right-side of the IDE to the left-side.

We’re also experimenting with a way to dock windows by selecting the drop-down menu at the top of each tool window and selecting a drop target. This makes it easier to move windows without having to click and drag, which can be uncomfortable for some developers with motor control challenges or repetitive stress injuries. This is an early preview of this feature, which you can turn on with the “Enable the Snap Control in Tool Windows” option from the Visual Studio > Preferences… > Preview Features menu.

An experimental docking menu for tool windows.

A quicker way to search and navigate your source code

Along with porting the rest of the search results window to native UI in this release, we’ve also brought forward grouping and to make it easier to get to the results you need when searching your solution.

The new search results window with “group by” and “Search within results,” in Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 4.

The prior search results window in Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 3.

Continuing the move to native macOS UI

In our Preview 1 blog post, we mentioned our goal with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac is to make a modern .NET IDE tailored for the Mac that delivers the productive experience you’ve come to love in Visual Studio. In this latest preview release, we continued this work by porting the following UIs:

• Git > Manage Stashes… menu
• Window > Layout > Save Current Layout… menu
• Preferences/Project Options > Code Formatting settings, and Standard Headers

Please keep sharing your feedback

As we move forward with our preview releases, we want to keep in close contact with developers like you who are trying the release. If you’re interested in hearing directly from our team, join our Preview Newsletter – we’ll share updates on what’s new and provide more opportunities for you to give feedback to our team.

Finally, please share your thoughts in our Visual Studio for Mac Preview survey, and keep sending those suggestions or problem reports coming! 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 impact you the most.