Visual Studio 2026 version 18.3 is now live to the public!

#dotnet #csharp #programming #VS2026 #VisualStudio #Microsoft #VisualStudio2026 #tech #TechNews #TechUpdates

https://officialaptivi.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/visual-studio-2026-v18-3-is-now-live/

Visual Studio 2026 v18.3 is now live!

A new version of Visual Studio 2026 is now available to the general public! This version of Visual Studio includes many improvements that were made to this IDE, along with improvements to your productivity.

This upgrade is free, and it depends on your installation size. For example, an upgrade from the last version of VS2026 with C# and C++ workloads to v18.3 requires that you download almost 4.1 GB of data.

We’ll highlight the most interesting changes made to Visual Studio in this version.

• Compact spacing in Solution Explorer: Visual Studio 18.3 increases spacing between items in the Solution Explorer, with the extra spacing being enabled by default, with an option to remove extra spacing.
• Faster scrolling in the text editor: You can now adjust the scrolling factor when scrolling down the source code quickly in the text editor by pressing the Alt key and using your mouse wheel.
• Insignificant line compression: You can increase your screen real estate by compressing lines that are empty by 25% to let you see more code while preserving readability.
• Slimmer left margin in the editor: In the source code editor, the left margins that surround the line number in your source code file are now reduced to give you more readability.
• Support for NuGet audit sources: You can now configure your own audit sources for NuGet packages management feature to manage your own package vulnerabilities without having to resort to using NuGet.org.
• Blazor Hot Reload improvements: Hot Reload in Blazor applications for web development has been upgraded to automatically restart when a rude edit has been discovered and to enable faster and more reliable debugging.
• Razor editor improvements: In the Razor editor, this version of Visual Studio now improves the overall performance of the editor by running the Razor compiler and tooling code within the Roslyn LSP server with co-hosting.

As for AI tools, here are some of the most striking changes:

• NuGet MCP server: The Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for NuGet allows GitHub Copilot to both retrieve real-time information about the installed packages in your projects and to update packages.
• Click to accept code completions: When you receive a code completion from GitHub Copilot in your source code, you can now point your cursor to the line of code that you want to add to the source and click on it.
• Colorized code completions: The code completions provided by GitHub Copilot are now colored to enhance readability. Also, code completions that are provided by IntelliCode are colorized.
• Slash commands for prompt instructions: When you’re writing your prompt with GitHub Actions, you can now use the slash character to get a list of commands that you can customize GitHub Copilot with.
• Copilot memories: In the Copilot memories feature, you can now teach the AI assistant to comply with your coding standards and to memorize them across all coding sessions to ensure consistency.
• Preview Markdown from the chat: If you’re adding or changing a Markdown document with GitHub Copilot, you can preview the generated Markdown format without applying it to your project.

In order to download Visual Studio 2026, ensure that you’re using Visual Studio Installer. You can download this version of Visual Studio, along with the release notes, here.

#VisualStudio2026 still can't figure out when manually changing the <Platforms>-list on a .NET project.
And will complain forever that there is something wrong with it.

Then just fix it. You created this fancy new SLNX format, but still failed to provide decent developer experience.

#Microsoft #VisualStudio #DotNet #CSharp