Visual Studio Blog

I always enjoy the quiet stretch between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s one of the few moments in the year when things slow down just enough to reflect on what actually resonated. While many of us were unplugging, our digital team was doing the opposite, editing and publishing 19 sessions from VS Live! Orlando to The post Welcome to 2026, A Growth Year for All of Us appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

I struggled to get started. For ages, I kept putting off building this website, creating a new programming language for Visual Studio, and coming up with fresh color themes. Each project looked overwhelming, and I couldn’t find the time or motivation to jump in. It all just felt like too much at once. But when The post How AI fixed my procrastination appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

It starts the way these things always start.  A red build. A failing test. And that quiet, sinking feeling of “This worked yesterday.”  Meet Sam. Sam’s not a junior, not a rockstar, just a solid developer who’s shipped enough code to know that bugs don’t care how confident you feel on Monday morning.  That test failure does not offer much help The post Debugging, but Without the Drama (A Visual Studio 2026 Story) appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

Here on the Visual Studio team, our top priority is making your coding experience smoother and more enjoyable. And that begins with truly listening to your feedback. We understand that sometimes sharing your thoughts can feel like tossing bug reports and suggestions into a black hole. It doesn’t feel good, and we get it. But The post Behind the scenes of the Visual Studio feedback system appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

You’re a .NET developer with a busy morning, and an Azure DevOps ticket drops: “Login endpoint 500s under load.” You’ve got to fix it, review a teammate’s feature branch, and keep your repo clean – all before lunch. Visual Studio’s Git tools turn this everyday Git workflow of creating topic branches, stashing changes, committing, and The post Streamlining your Git workflow with Visual Studio 2026 appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

There are many scenarios where Copilot Chat can feel limited by the built-in model training data. Maybe you want guidance on the latest web framework, documentation, or project-specific resources—but Copilot’s responses just aren’t specific enough. For developers who rely on up-to-date or esoteric answers, this gap can be a real frustration.  URL Context: Bringing the web into Copilot Chat  With the new URL context feature, Copilot Chat can now access The post Unlocking the Power of Web with Copilot Chat’s New URL Context appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

Visual Studio 2026 is here! If you haven’t heard the news yet, we’re excited to share with you that Visual Studio 2026 is now generally available! This new version can better assist you with several performance improvements, a redesigned user experience, and a major leap in AI-driven development. Read more about it here and get The post Visual Studio November Update – Visual Studio 2026, Cloud Agent Preview, and more appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

A straight look at what’s behind the keys We’ve all tried unlearning a keyboard shortcut – it feels like forgetting how to breathe. Muscle memory doesn’t mess around. We wrestle with this every time someone suggest a “quick” shortcut change. It’s not just editing a keybinding but navigating a history that makes Visual Studio so The post Why changing keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio isn’t as simple as it seems appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

In Visual Studio 2026 we introduced Copilot Profiler Agent, a new AI-powered assistant that helps you analyze and optimize performance bottlenecks in your code. By combining the power of GitHub Copilot with Visual Studio’s performance profiler, you can now ask natural language questions about performance, get insights into hot paths, and quickly identify optimization opportunities. The post Profiler Agent – Delegate the analysis, not the performance appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.

Visual Studio 2026 introduces new GitHub Copilot capabilities to support C++ developers in three development tasks:  Performing large-scale C++ refactors  Improving C++ build performance   Upgrading Microsoft C++ (MSVC) Build Tools  These experiences are available now as a Private Preview in Visual Studio 2026. Install Visual Studio 2026 and join the waitlist for Private Preview today.  C++ code editing tools for GitHub The post Upgrade MSVC, improve C++ build performance, and refactor C++ code with GitHub Copilot appeared first on Visual Studio Blog.