/awesome-visual-studio

A curated list of awesomeness for Visual Studio IDE.

Awesome

Awesome Visual Studio

Awesome

This page is a curated list of awesome things for Visual Studio (the full-blown IDE, not VS Code) by Microsoft.

If you are searching for Visual Studio Code related resources check here. Moreover, this page also includes some items relevant for Windows developers.

Suggestions and contributions are always welcome!
Make sure to read the contribution guidelines for more information before submitting a pull request.

General

Versions with support

🚧

Extension Sources

Extensions

The following list of resources has been collected from different sources on the internet searching for the most useful and common extensions used by developers. If you think a resource might be considered to be listed here, please fill an issue or create a pull request.

Web development

  • Web Essentials - Web Essentials extends Visual Studio with lots of new features that web developers have been missing for many years.
  • Typewriter - Generates TypeScript files from c# code files using TypeScript Templates. This allows you to create fully typed TypeScript representations of server side API that automatically updates when you make changes to your c# code.

Templates

  • SideWaffle - A collection of Item Templates for Visual Studio 2012/2013 that makes any web developer's life much easier

Commands

  • Productivity Power Tools - A set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity. Choose the one for your Visual Studio version.
  • Open Command Line - Easily open CMD or PowerShell from within Visual Studio.
  • Smart Paster - Paste clipboard into comments or strings in C#, VB, C++.

Editor

  • Supercharger - AutoText, CodeMAP, Intelligent Code Flow Lines, Code Highlighters, Rich Code, Magic Comments, Phrasing Review, Spellist, SuperFind, Statistics etc.
  • Indent Guides - Adds indentation guides to the code editor to easily visualize the level of indentation.
  • CodeAlignment - Language-agnostic plug-in that vertically aligns code, e.g. on = signs or even customizable regular expressions.
  • Syntax Highlighting Pack - Syntax highlighting for many more languages.
  • Viasfora - Add color to your Visual Studio Text Editor!
  • Multi Edit Mode - Adds multiple cursors to Visual Studio.
  • Tabs Studio - A Visual Studio extension empowering you to work comfortably with any number of open documents.
  • Intellisense Extender - Provide IntelliSense completions not only for imported types, but for all available in current solution and referenced assemblies.
  • I Hate Regions - Automatically expands regions and changes their font and color to essentially make them invisible.
  • Select Next Occurrence - Automatically expands regions and changes their font and color to essentially make them invisible.
  • RockMargin - Reincarnation of famous RockScroll extension for Visual Studio 2012-2019.
  • Codist - A productivity enhancer for C# programmers with advanced syntax highlight, Super Quick Info (code tooltip), Smart Bar (contextual toolbar), Navigation Bar, code structure markers on scrollbar, comment tagger, and more.
  • Glyphfriend 2017 - An extension to enhance the existing Intellisense to display preview glyphs for many of the common glyph-based font libraries like Font Awesome, Material Design, Octicons, and more.
  • ColorPicker - Integrated Color Picker for Visual Studio IDE and Editor.

Testing

  • NCrunch - An automated concurrent testing tool for Visual Studio.
  • OpenCoverUI - Visual Studio Integration for OpenCover.

Debugging

  • RevDeBug Prompter - Lightweight debugging aid for C#.
  • OzCode - OzCode is a Visual Studio Extension which cuts down on debugging time and increases productivity by detecting and isolating bugs, making them easy to fix. [$]
  • ReAttach - Easy way to re-attach to previous debug targets.
  • Child Process Debugging Power Tool - Extension that also instruct Visual Studio to automatically attach to child processes.
  • Conveyor - Allows you to easily test web applications from external computers, tablets & phones on your network and over the internet through tunnelling.

Refactoring

  • Roslynator - A collection of 500+ analyzers, refactorings and fixes for C#, powered by Roslyn.
  • SteroidsVS - Improves visibility of roslyn analyzer warnings and errors in documents. Includes an overall file quality indicator (bottom right corner, glows in specific color). Adds code structure view as code adornment.
  • SonarLint for Visual Studio 2017 - Roslyn based static code analysis: Find and instantly fix nasty bugs and code smells in C#, VB.Net, C, C++ and JS.
  • Resharper - Developer Productivity Tool for Visual Studio [$]
  • Refactoring Essentials - Open source extension for C# and VB.NET refactorings, including code best practice analyzers.
  • CodeMaid - Plug-in for clean-up and simplification of many code tasks in C++, C#, and many other languages.
  • Sonarqube - Detect bugs, vulnerabilities and code smells across project branches and pull requests.
  • Visual Studio Intellicode - AI-assisted developer productivity.
  • Code cracker for C# - An analyzer library for C# that uses Roslyn to produce refactorings, code analysis, and other niceties.

Package Management

  • Nuget Package Manager - NuGet is the package manager for the Microsoft development platform including .NET.

SQL

Resource Management

  • ResXManager - The most popular tool to localize and manage all kind of applications with resx-based resources. Shows all resources of a solution and let's you edit the strings and their localizations in a well-arranged data grid.

Configuration

  • SlowCheetah - Transform xml and json files at build time based on configuration. Contains tooling to assist in the creation and previewing of transform files.
  • Project File Tools - Provides Intellisense and other tooling for XML based project files such as .csproj and .vbproj files.

Build

  • BuildVision - A Visual Studio extension to visualize the building process.

Code Styling

  • EditorConfig - Language service for .editorconfig files. EditorConfig helps developers define and maintain consistent coding styles between different editors and IDEs.
  • StyleCop - Provides source code style and consistency tools.

Version Control

  • GitHub - GitHub integration for Visual Studio.
  • Pull Requests for Visual Studio - Create, review and comment on Pull Requests from Azure Repos inside Visual Studio.
  • CodeLineage - Easy access to a cumulative diff view between file revisions (supports svn, git, mercurial, perforce).
  • Git Diff Margin - Displays live Git changes of the currently edited file on Visual Studio margin and scroll bar.
  • File Differ - The easiest way to diff two files directly in Solution Explorer.
  • Visual Studio Bitbucket Extension - Provides the integration with Atlassian Bitbucket.
  • GitLab Extension for Visual Studio - A Visual Studio Extension that brings the GitLab Flow into Visual Studio.
  • GitFlow for Visual Studio 2017 - It exposes the most common GitFlow options when finishing branches, such as options to delete branches, rebase on development branch and tagging of release branches.

CI / CD

  • Anystat - A lightweight desktop notifications and dashboard app designed to host various widgets. These include, builds, releases, deployment environments, work items, health checks and metrics. AnyStatus runs in the background and notifies you when events occur.
  • Continuous Delivery Tools for Visual Studio - Simplifying the configuration of continuous build integration and continuous build delivery from within the Visual Studio IDE.
  • Catlight - CatLight is a notification app for developers. It shows the current status of continuous delivery, tasks, and bugs in the project and informs when attention is needed.

Metrics

  • WakaTime - Metrics, insights, and time tracking automatically generated from your programming activity.
  • Code Metrices - Helps to monitor the code complexity. As you type, the method complexity "health" is updated, and the complexity is shown near the method.
  • Microsoft CodeLens Code Health Indicator - This is an experimental CodeLens Indicator that shows information about the code being edited.

Diagrams

Documentation

  • GhostDoc - Generate XML Comments from your code, maintain clean and up-to-date documentation, produce help docs in multiple formats, use intelligent source code Spell Checker in Visual Studio.

XAML

  • XamlStyler - Visual Studio extension to help format your XAML source code.
  • XAMLRegions - Provides the ability to create regions in XML and XAML code.

Xamarin

  • LiveXAML for Xamarin Forms - LiveXAML for Xamarin Forms Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms with zero configuration or maintainence. Install this extension + LiveXAML NuGet package, and you are ready to go.

Console

  • VSColorOutput - Color highlighting for Build, Find and Debug output windows. Custom match patterns and colors can be added.

Shortcuts

Syncing extensions

  • Roaming Extension Manager - Stores your installed extensions in the cloud and synchronizes them across your machines for a uniform experience.

Powershell

Integrations

  • ILSpy - Integrates the ILSpy decompiler into Visual Studio.
  • VsVIM - VIM in Visual Studio

Code Review

  • Live Share - eal-time collaborative development from the comfort of your favorite tools.

Others

  • CodeContracts - Source code for the CodeContracts tools for .NET
  • Developer Assistant - Developer Assistant for Visual Studio enables developers to find and reuse over 21 million code snippets and code sample projects from within the Visual Studio IDE.

Documentation

Themes

  • Dracula Theme - The Visual Studio landing page on Microsoft's Developer Network.
  • Studiostyles - Create and share Visual Studio color schemes.
  • Color Themes for Visual Studio - Provides additional color themes for Visual Studio IDE. Includes themes contributed by community members plus themes from Microsoft's Color Themes Editor.
  • Color Theme Editor for Visual Studio 2019 - llows users to create and edit Visual Studio themes. Themes can customize colors used for menus, toolbars, tabs, titlebars, the text editor, and other environment colors.

Tips and Tricks

Shortcuts

Social Media

Blogs