Visual Studio

Welcome to the Visual Studio UserVoice site. Let us know what you would like to see in future versions of the Visual Studio suite of products. This site is for suggestions and ideas. If you need to file a bug, visit the Visual Studio Connect site: http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio.

ASP.NET Runtime/Web Tooling suggestions have moved! All your ideas, including your votes, have been transferred and are searchable in the ASP.Net Uservoice forum. Please submit any new ASP.NET Runtime/Web Tooling suggestions, or vote on existing suggestions by going to http://aspnet.uservoice.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks – Deon Herbert
Visual Studio Team

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  1. Improve the performance of Visual Studio

    Visual Studio seems to be getting slower. Please focus on improving the performance and limiting the enormous load on the HDD

    5,031 votes
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      90 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

      An update on performance – First, thank you to all who provided the ideas and votes on the performance forum. We used that data to help prioritize the improvements in VS 2012, and as such, I’ve rolled the performance ideas into this main forum. You’ll see a performance tag which shows all the ideas from that forum.

      This idea remains very highly voted, but has slipped outside the top 20 in terms of hot votes, meaning few people are still voting for it.

      We’re going to leave it open for now, and monitor that count, as you can never truly be “finished” with performance. At some point, we’ll close the idea out and return your votes back to you. Of course, you are welcome to resubmit the idea at that time, to see if there is still energy around that as a top idea.

      Again, thanks for your feedback and…

    • Make Debugging faster

      It takes too long to begin debugging an application. It also takes too much time stepping through code in debug mode.

      1,358 votes
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        23 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
      • Make Visual Studio startup and shutdown faster

        Application startup without any solution/project should be instantaneous (less than 1 second)
        Application shutdown should not exceed 100ms for each open project and should show a progress bar.

        1,250 votes
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          13 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

          Changed the title to clarify that this is Visual Studio startup/shutdown.

        • Improve performance of Visual Studio builds and other uses better when working with solutions with several projects (ex. 40+)

          When working with a large number of projects in a solution, builds and loading of the solution can become quite slow. We are currently working with around 40 projects and Visual Studio is starting to crawl and this is unfortunate since we are aiming at having possibly over 300 total projects part of the solution due to a modular application design but are afraid of doing so due to performance woes. Making Visual Studio better at handling large projects in terms of performance and also in terms of ease of navigating between projects and their contained files will greatly reduce…

          958 votes
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            14 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
          • Make VS scalable by switching to 64 bit

            No matter how fast and efficient VS will be, we will eventually reach some limit.

            I've reached the memory limit since VS 2003 -- around 1.3gb memory usage VS started to give out of memory exceptions. That was using 20-30 projects.

            Nowadays we have more than 70 projects in the solution and VS 2010 doesn't reach the x86 memory limit (on a 64 bit windows). Eventually we'll reach the number of projects that will be the tipping point for VS.

            Using a 64 bit build of VS will enable us to just buy memory and still work with that solution.…

            794 votes
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              10 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
            • Decrease the Memory Footprint

              Since Visual Studio is a tool which can be used in so many scenarios (desktop development, web development, game development, etc) and supports so many languages (managed, native, scripting) it seems it is often loading tools and editors which are not needed for the current scenario.

              It would be nice to have very fine grain control over what components are loaded at any given time to decrease the memory footprint and increase the performance.

              For example, if I just want to edit a C# file in a class library it seems the memory footprint could be much smaller than when…

              697 votes
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                8 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
              • Reduce overall build time and provide better feedback on the progress in the UI.

                Building currently completely blocks the UI, and no progress is shown. Just showing a responsive, non-blocking UI windows which shows progress and has a working cancel button would be a great addition.

                690 votes
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                  12 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                • Make Solutions Load Faster

                  Larger solutions can take a long time to load. Make it faster, so I can get started on my work right away.

                  571 votes
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                    2 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                  • Improve the XAML Designer performance

                    It often takes several seconds for a XAML Window to fully display. The editor is constantly pausing as I type, sometimes for as long as a second, before catching up with keystrokes.

                    560 votes
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                      12 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                    • Make (editing) Typing/Scrolling more responsive

                      There is a visible lag between the moment you press a key and the moment this translates into a character on the screen. Things like Go To Definition, and scrolling, can hang for several seconds.

                      It appears to get worse over time as you work in the editor.

                      529 votes
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                        8 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                      • Make change files faster

                        When you open 10 files or more, change between thems or close all is slow, more if some of the files are designers (WinForms, xaml)

                        321 votes
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                          1 comment  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                        • Make it feasible to use Visual Studio as a programmers notepad replacement

                          There are times when you just need to open a standalone code file written in something like C# for viewing or editing but don't want the burden of the whole IDE especially with it's slow load time. What I propose is make the Visual Studio Editor a separate invokable application on it's own or make it so that when Visual Studio is started up with a file path(s) feed in as run time arguments, then load the IDE in a minimal state tailored to working with a single file. Providing this functionality would allow some programmers who chose to manage…

                          290 votes
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                            7 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                          • Make Intellisense snappier

                            Intellisense for VB, C#, C++ should be faster.

                            242 votes
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                              3 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                            • Add "Ignore All" and "Reload All" buttons to Reload Project dialog

                              When projects and solution is regenerated outside of Visual Studio, and Visual Studio picks detects the change and offers user to Reload or Ignore, it offers one or two dialogs per project. There's no way to "Ignore All" or "Reload All". This is low-cost high-impact feature for many developers who generate their solutions and projects using external tools.

                              235 votes
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                                5 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                              • Compilation responsivness and enhancement

                                C# and VB.NET compilers are blazingly fast! However, on RebuildAll scenarios, the user experience could be (easily) enhanced if:

                                1) The progress bar would show accurately the RebuildAll progression.

                                2) If before compilation, VS could warn/break if one or several target DLLs WndHandle are currently hold by some processes, and which process hold which handle (the process explorer way)

                                3) RebuildAll doesn't try to recompile DLLs relying on DLLs that didn't compile successfully.

                                219 votes
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                                  2 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                • Make "Go To Definition" faster (C++)

                                  Clicking on that option often takes 5-10 seconds and it completely hangs the GUI.

                                  195 votes
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                                    6 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                  • Work with the R# team to make VS startup with R# inside faster

                                    R# is a super popular addin and dramatically slows down VS startup. This situation certainly impacts negatively the VS startup issue many are complaining about.

                                    Through he VSIP program R# guys and VS guys should meet and see how the R# bulk code (>40MB of dlls) load could be smartly deferred when the user is choosing a sln / loading a sln / starting work with a sln.

                                    192 votes
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                                      1 comment  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                    • Separate WPF designer from xaml text editor

                                      Separating designer from xaml text editor will allow use them on multiple monitors. Also it takes times to open a xaml file because the designer loads. Even if only xaml text editor is visible. I prefer to edit xaml manualy and don't need the designer. If i need it some day, i will open it explicitly

                                      167 votes
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                                        3 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                      • Make source code (text) editor faster

                                        With a lot of extensions installed, the source code editor can really slow down on some older systems. Scrolling isn't smooth, and typed text can have big delays in showing up.

                                        135 votes
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                                          1 comment  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                        • Get Context menus up faster

                                          When you right click an item in Solution Explorer in particular the menu it is very slow in appearing. Make that faster and snappier. Context menu in editor is also slow, and can be improved too.

                                          129 votes
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                                            2 comments  ·  Performance  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
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