My 30+ Tweaks to Visual Studio 2022 - Make VS Work For You

I often get asked about how I set up Visual Studio, including what theme do I use, what extensions I use, and how I configure the options. Often people think that I have installed additional features because my Visual Studio has quality of life upgrades that theirs does not seem to have.
In this video, I will show you the 30+ changes I have made to Visual Studio to make it work better for me. I believe that every developer should learn how their IDE works to make themselves more efficient. Knowing what is available also allows you to make a more informed decision about changing IDEs.
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00:00 Introduction
01:45 Extensions
07:23 Environment - General
09:39 Environment - Preview Features
11:47 Environment - Tabs and Windows
16:33 Projects and Solutions - General
19:13 Text Editor - General
27:45 Text Editor - Code Cleanup
30:20 Text Editor - C# - General
33:35 Text Editor - C# - Scroll Bars
37:48 Text Editor - C# - Tabs
40:21 Text Editor - C# - Advanced
48:09 Text Editor - C# - Code Style - Naming
51:46 Text Editor - C# - IntelliSense
53:36 Debugging - .NET / C++ Hot Reload
55:22 Debugging - XAML Hot Reload
57:38 GitHub - Copilot chat
1:00:11 Conclusion

[@andergarcia1115]

I want to say that I don't think I speak only for myself. There are many people out there who think the same, so I'm speaking for them as well. Your work gives me a road, something to fight for, a dream to follow. It gives me hope. Thank you for waking up the programmer inside me. Thank you with all my heart, you are my inspiration and i promise to follow you till the end.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@phillismable6303]

He isn't Jesus you plank, get out in to some green places for a walk as you seem to be about to break.

[@dingdong141]

Fantastic work... User of VS for long time but never explored useful settings in such a detail. God bless you my teacher.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you.

[@cecilchampenois4998]

Thank you for shining brilliant light on all the ways to improve our IDE environment and to become betters software developers. You do a great job, Tim. Keep up the good work. You are very much appreciated.

[@BittermanAndy]

Good idea for a video. I used to spend a lot more time personalising my VS layout and shortcuts than I do now; at some point, re-setting it all up every upgrade or on every new PC became more hassle than it was worth. But making simple little tweaks (the kind readily available in options menus and/or transferrable from import/export settings) can result in big wins. Then I had a junior dev assisting me with something on my PC the other day, "I'm just going to move your Solution Explorer to the other side of the screen", NO! NO! HOW DARE YOU! NO! Are they not teaching juniors basic etiquette any more??? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@IAmTimCorey]

Chaning your settings because they were on your machine? Nope, time to teach the junior dev a valuable life lesson.

[@theonlywallrus]

Thanks Tim! Super helpful, I appreciate the effort you put it into this

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@arnotek]

I was looking for something like this for a while - this was very helpful. Many times when watching your videos I will see you do something and I am usually going "wait, what did he do?" (Thank you for usually saying what keys you hit that we can't see in the video - it helps a lot.) I can't help but thinking about the amount of conditional logic in Visual Studio. The IDEs of today are wonderful - complex, but wonderful just the same.

[@IAmTimCorey]

There is definitely a LOT that is going on behind the scenes. It gets quite complex.

[@Mawral]

More useful than I could've expected, much thanks.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@AvgDan]

Thank you, I don't have time to watch right now but I've been wanting to see this from you!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@leviking1989]

Excellent suggestions, I am going to try them all! Thank you, Tim! :)

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@RubenALopes]

To master your craft you first have to master your tools. Thanks for this!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You're very welcome!

[@user-jk4zc8lh4m]

This is another very helpful content, Tim. Thank You!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@Hazzel31337]

used some of them thanks, highly recommended video guys

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad it was helpful.

[@JakobStrasser]

We're finally using vs2022 at work, thanks for all the tips!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@tetsballer1835]

Decided today is the day to upgrade from vs 2019 to 2022 at work, I will for sure be trying some of these new settings!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@hgmamaci]

There is always an extra when I watch your videos. Thank you very much for your efforts.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@user-mo7hs1en8o]

Best channel on KZbin, thanks for ur helphul videos ❤

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@UmanPC]

A huge thank You, Tim.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@SagharMax]

Mine is the same as yours, exactly. I am excited; thank you for sharing this video.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@michi1106]

Thanks a lot, this video was exactly which i needed, to impove my work with VS

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@jasonlokismith]

first off Tim, awesome video, really really really loved this. Second to this if there is anything i have learnt from this video is that VS is lightyears ahead when it comes to its IDE, i have always said it but these tweaks just solidifies that thought for me.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for sharing!

[@mohammedabujayyab6146]

Many thanks for the nice explanation

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@dmacuk]

Absolutely fantastic, 10/10 for Font Sizer, not just for presentation's, but for those, like me, with deteriorating eyesight. At last I can VS clearly.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great! I'm glad it is helpful.

[@caseyspaulding]

Thanks Tim!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@AvgDan]

I like how scrolling mouse wheel up when hovering over the tabs makes the tabs collapse to single row and scrolling mouse wheel down shows the extra rows again.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Yep, that is a nice feature.

[@codefoxtrot]

Long overdue video, thanks Tim! Call me crazy, I also add an s_ naming convention for private or internal static fields.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@kiquenet]

Great mister !! VS power !!! Maybe export VS settings to file xml or json? Using powershell to load VS Settings ?

[@tabhorian]

If only for the Underscore private fields this was worth it, but there is so much more. thanks!

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad it was helpful.

[@Wildertech]

Great content. I enjoy your videos a lot. Is there any way to export these changes so that I can apply them across multiple computers or pass them on to coworkers/new-hires?

[@IAmTimCorey]

The settings are saved in a file, so in theory you could share that file. I'm not sure if it is designed to be shared, though. In the Tools -> Options dialog under Environment, there is an Import/Export Settings section. It doesn't seem fully formed, though. I believe Editorconfig can do some of these things, but I'm not sure how much. I've also not had great success with making that work consistently.

[@kidservice]

Thanks, it was very useful and in your settings I found a fix for missing snippets that was bothering me (in the c# intellisense section)

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@kell7689]

The quality and frequency of these videos is pretty wild

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you.

[@peterstangelo8627]

Hi thanks for this (I noticed you have an extension called "Inline suggestions" by Microsoft -what is it? -and where can I find it?)

[@IAmTimCorey]

I believe that came from just installing Visual Studio.

[@allenbythesea]

Thanks for this, some really awesome tweaks that I was not even slightly aware of. How are we supposed to know about these otherwise?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Look in the Options dialog at the various settings.

[@caseypries7559]

Tim, any idea how to stop VS from auto completing code? I create a div tag and when completing the closing tag with > it replaces the tag with some garbage i never asked for. I think it's a syncfusion tag or something. Anyway, I hit undo and it goes back to my div tag and I can complete it without further error. I've used VS off and on for several years now and 2022 is the worst I've ever used. The intellisence is slow and sometimes stops. The error list is often not fully populated and takes several rebuilds to catch all the errors. Some times it shows errors that aren't there and it requires a restart to fix. Most of the time when adding nuget packages there are errors requiring multiple uninstalls and reinstalls. It's just really bad.

[@gonace]

In my opinion, spaces are always the preferred way since tabs can be inconsistent between systems, but spaces are not.

[@IAmTimCorey]

That inconsistency is actually a feature. If you need to make the text bigger in order to read it, spaces get bigger too. That can lead to little available space. By making tabs smaller in that scenario, you gain back some needed space.

[@edburdo]

tabs/spaces: I always did 2 spaces. Curly braces started at the end of the line. it always felt more concise and less space. New place I work for, wants 4 spaces, new lines, etc. They do many of their PRs outside of Visual Studio, so "reformatting" to view isn't an easy option.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Yep, conforming to a new culture can be hard when you want something different.

[@AvgDan]

20:31 I really wish there was an option to change this to "Go to Implementation". I prefer the modifier on this one to be Ctrl+Alt because I like being able to highlight an entire word when I hold control and click.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You can! Go to Environment -> Keyboard under the Options menu. in there search for "Implementation". You will see the "Edit.GoToImplementation" shortcut. Change it to what works best for you.

[@AvgDan]

@@IAmTimCorey When I hold CTRL+ALT and left-click into the "Press shortcut keys" nothing gets entered into the textbox for me to click "Assign". Thanks though!

[@reinhardlackner1925]

just a quick question about font sizer - what was your actual problem since I see the extension on the visual studio marketplace and do not really understand your remarks about getting in contact with mads to use it?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Originally, Font Sizer was an open-source plug-in by someone else. However, that person deleted their entire online profile, including their extensions and the GitHub repo. I found an old fork of the extension and passed it on to Mads. He created the Font Sizer 2.0 extension and put it on the marketplace.

[@unskeptable]

Guys do you know if edit and continue is going to be fixed ? It is currently broken because in big projects it starts scanning every file and hangs

[@OnoderaMyGirl]

the best ty

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@Susandwyer]

Colorize tabs! Excellent.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad you like them!

[@Susandwyer]

@@IAmTimCoreyI do, and much more particularly in text editor. Always excited to see a new video. Thanks boss.

[@TonyWhitley]

My new discovery is that the mouse scroll closes and opens multiple lines of tabs.

[@SamMackrill]

Nice. You forgot the best option: Auto save on losing focus in Documents

[@IAmTimCorey]

I don't personally use that one. I never got used to the save on lost focus. Part of it is because I use hot reload a lot and it can mess with that. For example, if I get halfway through a fix and have to respond to a Teams message, hot reload breaks because the change isn't fully formed.

[@BrentHollett]

I always have my explorer windows on the left, matching Windows Explorer. I never understood why IDE developers started putting in on the right by default.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Whatever works best for you.

[@harkiratsingh4947]

Keyboard shortcut to add new item ?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Ctrl+Shift+A

[@jeffsherman9638]

I’m looking for custom colorize comments where most are set to the default color while others can be set to another color

[@IAmTimCorey]

That's rather specific. You might need to get some help building an extension for that.

[@GoTSkillZ]

Can you export these settings and share the file?

[@IAmTimCorey]

The settings are saved in a file, so in theory you could share that file. I'm not sure if it is designed to be shared, though. In the Tools -> Options dialog under Environment, there is an Import/Export Settings section. It doesn't seem fully formed, though. I believe Editorconfig can do some of these things, but I'm not sure how much. I've also not had great success with making that work consistently.

[@zius1975]

I can't find this option "Automatically surround selction...." on my VS2022

[@djlunarmonk]

Me neither, seems it is actually a preview feature.

[@IAmTimCorey]

It is part of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.9. That's the latest public version (not a preview version). So you need to make sure Visual Studio is updated. Then it should be an option.

[@djlunarmonk]

Oddly enough, I updated yesterday after seeing this video and didn't get the latest version like I would assume. Today though, thanks!

[@GuildOfCalamity]

Thanks for this video Cory, but I think you could speed this up just a little bit.

[@IAmTimCorey]

KZbin has an option to speed up the video playback.

[@MichealShodamola]

My Mentor

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad it was helpful.

[@sexonlegs666]

Font SIZE = Hold down Ctrl + Mouse wheel

[@IAmTimCorey]

Only for the font in the text editor. Not for the fonts in the menus, dialogs, Solution Explorer, etc.

[@silverfox4123]

I typically use Jetbrains Rider but do use Studio Enterprise.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Sounds good.

[@petrzurek5713]

My one and only tweak is to install JB Rider 😀

[@IAmTimCorey]

What benefit does it give you over the free Visual Studio?

[@petrzurek5713]

@@IAmTimCorey I can run it natively on my Apple Silicon Macs

[@IAmTimCorey]

That is a nice one. VS Code has the C# Dev Kit now, but it isn't up to the same level where it can compete with Rider on Mac.

[@_miranHorvat]

Leaving things on default, enables you to help others easier.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Sacrificing speed for compatibility is not often a wise choice for developers.

[@jasonevans498]

Customising my Visual Studio has never been a problem for when I needed to help others. Leaving things default for the sake of other people is not worth it.

[@X400DYL]

Some great Tips Tim, thanks

[@mynameisshadywhat]

Providing suggestions on how they can improve their productivity or development experience can be far more valuable.

[@WillEhrendreich]

Anyone here tried neovim?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Not me.

[@TonyWhitley]

😄😁😆😅🤣😂🤡

[@WillEhrendreich]

@@TonyWhitley I'm not exactly what is funny about that. Are you laughing AT neovim? Laughing that I would ask about it? Laughing at me for it? Something else?

[@TonyWhitley]

I typed a long reply which YT discarded so here's the tl;dr: laughing AT it.

[@WillEhrendreich]

@@TonyWhitley are you from the "laughing at neovim because you love Visual Studio" perspective, or the "laughing at Neovim because you love Emacs" perspective? Also, I'm going to guess you haven't tried it?

[@Timberfist]

Why spend so much of the video talking about settings that are already the default? An hour is already a long time to spend on a video that simply covers tweaks to an IDE; why make it longer than in needs to be by including non-tweaks?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Depending on when you installed Visual Studio for the first time, some may be default or not. Everyone will have different defaults because Microsoft doesn't want to interrupt what you are used to in order to give you something new. They want you to opt-in.

[@MiningForPies]

Step one, install Rider. 🤔

[@IAmTimCorey]

What benefit does it give you over the free Visual Studio?

[@MiningForPies]

@@IAmTimCorey visual studio isn’t free for me. I don’t use windows at home, so rider gives me a cross platform consistency. Work enterprise edition on my work laptop, but I prefer a combination of Rider for its refactoring tools and VS Code for its speed. Luckily they let me use my licence for Rider on my work laptop and I ignore visual studio.

[@codefoxtrot]

​@@IAmTimCorey As someone who uses both Rider and Visual Studio, I would offer that Rider has more built-in code analyzers that spot much more than Visual Studio does. Example, it spots 'multiple enumerations' when I've done a LINQ operation on an IEnumerable that causes it to be enumerated more than once. Just one of many examples. I would also venture to say, Rider analyzers tend to 'teach' you newer ways of doing things as the C# language specification evolves. There are downsides to Rider, e.g. big one, no SQL database project designer or ability to publish a SQL database project. Hot Reload when working with Blazor is also not as strong. So it's a give and a take. Visual Studio Community is certainly amazing. I never think of things as VS2022 vs Rider. Just awesome to have two powerhouse tools out there... ohh and it would be remiss not to mention vscode, the superior HTML editor!

[@padybonder]

For me Rider just feels more user friendly, particularly when using the new UI in Rider, and very often new usability features in Visual Studio already existed in Rider Some examples: Right-clicking on a project in the solution pops up a menu with at most half the options as visual studio: helps to find the thing you need more quickly. It offers easier tweaking of editor colors, which I used to have a very vibrant red background on parts of code with an error: this is much easier to see as a thin red squigly line. The side and bottom 'windows' (solution explorer, text explorer) are much easier/quicker to open or close. There are play buttons in the editor for the launchsettings.json files, which enable starting a project directly from there. Also it feels quicker for large solutions, although the difference is not that big any more since VS 2022. Further it has better support for markdown files, including plantuml support.