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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.