Visual Studio For Mac Reviews

12 min readJun 29, 2021

To learn more about Visual Studio for Mac, please visit the What’s New page. For information about Subscriber benefits, you may visit the Subscriptions page. Looking to compare Visual Studio subscriptions? Go to the Visual Studio pricing page.

After spending months in preview, Microsoft today is officially launching its Visual Studio coding platform for the Mac (via VentureBeat). Visual Studio allows developers to code applications using Microsoft’s integrated development environment (IDE) on Apple’s macOS platform, which they can sync across both Windows and Mac devices.
Thanks to integration with Xamarin, a cross-platform software development company that Microsoft acquired last year, Visual Studio encourages macOS and iOS developers ‘to use Microsoft’s development tools, since they will no longer need a Windows computer or virtual machine to do so.’ Xamarin Studio is expected to eventually close for good following a full integration into Microsoft.

“Developers get a great IDE and a single environment to not only work on end-to-end solutions — from mobile and web apps to games — but also to integrate with and deploy to Azure,” Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group, said in a statement. “Whether you use C#, F#, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Xamarin or Unity, you’ll get a best-in-class development environment, natively designed for the Mac.”

Visual Studio has been designed natively for macOS, according to Microsoft, letting developers manage their code hosted by any provider, including GitHub and Visual Studio Team Services. Developers can build, connect, and tune native mobile apps for iOS, macOS, and Android while also having the ability to create web applications thanks to support for ASP.NET Core. In terms of programming languages, the C# and F# languages are supported.
There are three different versions of Visual Studio for Mac that users can download, including Visual Studio Community, Visual Studio Professional, and Visual Studio Enterprise. Microsoft markets Community as its free, but ‘fully-featured,’ IDE for students and individual developers. Professional targets small teams with subscription benefits, while more ‘demanding’ users and projects with larger scale are suggested to look into Enterprise.
For its cloud subscriptions, there are yearly and monthly options available to users interested in the higher-tier Visual Studio plans. An annual subscription to Visual Studio Professional costs $539/year while a monthly subscription costs $45/month. For Visual Studio Enterprise, users will pay $2,999/year or $250/month. Subscribers will be able to earn small credits back each month for the yearly tiers, contingent on their use of different Azure services.
For a detailed breakdown of the differences between each Visual Studio subscription, including individual licenses, check out the app’s new website.

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Click the button to download the latest version of Visual Studio 2017 for Mac. For instructions on setup and install, see the Setup and Install Visual Studio for Mac documentation.

To learn more about Visual Studio 2017 for Mac, see Mac System Requirements and Mac Platform Targeting and Compatibility.

Gopro studio for mac 2017. Hey @brianf11. This is a strange bug, but GoPro Studio is asking you to open a project rather than a GoPro MP4 file. Try deleting the plist on your computer and reopen GoPro Studio to.

To learn more about other related downloads, see the Downloads page.

What’s New in 7.8

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8 Releases

May 13, 2019 — Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.4
March 12, 2019 — Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.3
February 28, 2019 — Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.2
February 22, 2019 — Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.1
February 20, 2019 — Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8

Release Highlights

This release focuses on improving the quality in Visual Studio for Mac through bug fixes, performance improvements, and reliability improvements.

We also updated the version of NuGet to 4.8, .NET Core SDK to 2.1.504, and .NET Core Runtime 2.1.8

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8 (7.8.0.1624)

released February 20, 2019 https://hotrenew.medium.com/itube-studio-for-mac-7838d46cdf04.

Shell

We fixed an issue where custom key bindings for Remove Unused and Sort (Usings) don’t work.
We fixed an issue where switching from the application and returning, does not focus on the editor correctly.
We fixed an issue where the cursor in editor window is lost when switching applications.
We fixed an issue where focusing out/into Visual Studio changes the default focused element on the UI.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac would fail to track file changes for files in certain folders.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac doesn’t remember opened files.
We fixed an issue where the Toolbar selector for build configuration is disabled.
We fixed an issue where adding a new folder to a project does not allow instant renaming.
We fixed an issue where Start Debugging after Start without Debugging results in an exception for ASP.Net projects.
We fixed a performance issue with build output search.
The Run Item command on the Solution Explorer has been renamed to Run Project.
We fixed an issue where the welcome page is shown when loading a solution from finder.

.NET Core

We updated to .NET Core 2.1.8 to include a security update.
We fixed an issue where the create button doesn’t create new project for .NET Core 3.0 preview 2.
We fixed an issue where .NET Core 3.0 can be selected in the New Project dialog when it is not supported.
We removed the VB.NET option from .NET Core projects.

ASP.NET Core

We fixed an issue where the Folder profile would be created with ‘Default’ configuration instead of ‘Release’.

Web Tools

We fixed an issue where Publish to Azure creates a profile with the wrong name.
We fixed an issue where application arguments are not passed to the Azure Functions host.
We added the following additional Azure Functions templates
CosmosDB trigger
EventHub trigger
IoT Hub trigger
SendGrid trigger
ServiceBus Queue trigger
ServiceBus Topic trigger
We fixed an issue where it was not possible to publish to Azure API App instances.

Xamarin

We updated the Xamarin Test Cloud agent NuGet version.
We fixed an issue where the View Archives command would appear in .NET Core projects.

Xamarin.Forms

IntelliSense in Xamarin.Forms XAML files for FontFamily is now available.

Designers

We fixed an issue where the toolbox regressed Android designer usage.
We fixed an issue when attempting to drag and drop controls to iOS storyboards from the Tool Box after searching for controls does not work.

Xamarin.Android

We fixed an issue where the JDK notification was shown on the welcome page, even for non-Android projects.
We fixed an issue where launching Visual Studio for Mac without any Java installed shows 2 system prompts to install Java.
We fixed an issue where the Android resource update could occur at the same time as a build which could then cause build issues.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac would fail to upload APK to Acer Chromebook R11.
We fixed an issue where new Android apps have uppercase letters in the package name.
We fixed an issue where ‘Your project is not referencing the ‘Mono.Android.Version=v8.1’ framework’ when AndroidUseLatestPlatformSDK is true.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac does not recognize AndroidManifest in specific build configurations.
We fixed an issue where opening the Report A Problem dialog also displays ‘Install JDK’ dialog.
We fixed an issue where the Google Play SDK warning is shown even when publishing Ad-Hoc.

Xamarin.iOS

It is now possible to choose .pdf files for image assets that do not support vector images.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac erroneously indicates that a Xamarin.Mac property is unavailable.
We fixed an issue where it is not possible to choose devices for named colors in the asset catalog.
We fixed an issue where the iOS simulator is no longer brought to front when starting a debug session.
We fixed an issue where Native References not working in iOS library projects and appear to be ignored.
We fixed an issue where deleting a Native Reference does not delete the the file on disk.
We fixed an issue where the Debugger doesn’t connect to a keyboard extension on any device.

Xamarin.Mac

We fixed an issue where .xib templates seem to need customObjectInstantitationMethod='direct' added.
We fixed an issue where it is not possible to change the target framework version for Xamarin.Mac full on re-opening project options.
We fixed an issue where the project options for a Mac build (classic) shows incorrect UI.

Code Editor

We fixed an issue where the code fix preview window is too small.
We fixed an issue where error squiggles were not up to date.
We fixed an issue where the editor would freeze while typing
We fixed an issue where Changing the tab would not allow you to search a file
We fixed an issue where Using statement indenting is incorrect.
We fixed an issue where Roslyn throws a fatal exception (System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException).
We fixed an issue where formatting of parameters across multiple lines is incorrect.
We fixed an issue where the constructor generator would cause Visual Studio for Mac to crash.
We fixed an issue where smart semicolon placement causes incorrect semicolon placement.
We fixed an issue where typing can be slow in large files when accessibility is enabled.
We fixed an issue where a fatal error can occur when trying to navigate inside the editor using VoiceOver.
We fixed an issue where the caret location in quick fix margin is incorrect.
We fixed a performance issue where indent correcting is taking up too much time on large files.
We fixed an issue where Intellisense soft-selection is confusing.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac can’t open .targets files.
We fixed an issue where the display updates partially when commenting a collapsed method.
We fixed an issue where C# syntax highlight doesn’t work for some of the keywords.
We fixed an issue where invoking some snippets from the toolbox in .cs files leads to poorly formatted code.
We fixed an issue where pressing Down to choose the closing tag completion in XAML IntelliSense closes the completion window.
We fixed an issue where the file ‘redacted’ could not be opened.
We fixed an issue where sometimes pasting fails in XAML files.
We fixed an issue where, when adding an attribute via Intellisense, it does not trim ‘Attribute’ from the name.
We fixed an issue where code suggestion does the wrong thing when ( is pressed after a stray arrow key.

NuGet

We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac crashes after ‘Could not add packages’ error.
We updated the version of NuGet to 4.8.
NuGet package diagnostic warnings are now shown in the Solution Explorer. Any diagnostics warnings will be rendered with a warning icon and the full text of the warning available as a tool tip.
We fixed a set of issues with NuGet:
problem while restoring NuGet packages which don’t have stable version.
The VS4Mac bundle nuget version is too old: 4.3.1.
Referencing packages conditionally using variable does not work correctly.
Xamarin.Forms app with multi target framework library referenced fail to build.
Visual Studio Mac Csproj build not support Item contidion.
Support conditional NuGet PackageReferences in multi-targeting projects.
Show per-framework dependencies when multi-targeting.
VS cannot build F# dotnet core solution.
Nuget restore ignore build targets.
NuGet restores the wrong version of Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.

Debugger

We fixed an issue where the debugger would fail when running on an external console on Mojave.

Test Tools

We fixed an issue where xUnit Fact ‘DisplayName’ not shown in test explorer if the name has a period at the end.
We fixed an issue where the text editor unit test integration (‘Unit test ‘name’ could not be loaded’) would fail.
We fixed a performance issue where the ‘Test Results’ pane has bad performance when very large amounts of text are shown.
We fixed an issue where the unit test integration in the editor does not properly trigger test cases.
We fixed an issue that could cause xunit to fail to restore.

F#

We fixed an issue where open statements for F# must be manually added when pasting/writing code.
We fixed an issue where new F# projects shows IntelliSense errors.
We fixed an issue for F# projects where Visual Studio for Mac overwrites the project GUID to be lowercase instead of uppercase.

Project System

We fixed an issue where the copy & paste of a XAML file causes a disassociation between the .xaml and .xaml.cs files.
We fixed an issue where files are being added to ItemGroup.Compile(Remove) and this related issue — Error type of namespace not found.
We fixed an issue where an invalid C# file is created with a new library project.
We fixed an issue where it is not possible to create a culture specific .resx file through the ‘New File .’ menu in the Solutions Explorer context menu.

Assembly Browser

We fixed an issue where the Assembly Browser shows the wrong icon for properties.
We fixed an issue where System.DayOfWeek enum (Wednesday) does not appear to be assigned a value.

Accessibility

We fixed a number of accessibility issues in this release, including several VoiceOver issues in the Debugger and in creating iOS developer certificates, and Keyboard issues in the Android SDK Manager.

Other

We fixed an issue where unchecking the Organize Using > Place System directives first setting does not save.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac is not remembering settings.
We fixed an issue where Checking for updates can result in multiple prompts to sign in.

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.1.4

released February 22, 2019

Visual Studio Windows Vs Mac

We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac becomes unresponsive when selecting two column view.

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.2.1

released February 28, 2019

We fixed an issue where Debugger features sometimes don’t work as expected with Unity.

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.3.2

released March 12, 2019

This release contains an updated 4.8 NuGet Client, which in turn closes a NuGet Client vulnerability.
We fixed an issue where Using Git to publish an existing project to a new remote repository was not working.
We fixed an issue where Git remote operations were failing in Visual Studio for Mac:.
We fixed an issue where Tooltips not being shown for F# solutions.
We fixed an issue where The Report a Problem dialog crashes Visual Studio for Mac when entering details.
We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac crashes while using Report a Problem if the debugger connection is lost.
We fixed an issue where Two sign in popup windows would show if you weren’t signed in and tried to Report a Problem.
We fixed an issue causing warnings about missing icons to show up in the log files when using Report a Problem.
We fixed an issue preventing build messages from displaying in the Build Output window after building Docker Compose projects.

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.4.1

released May 13, 2019

This release fixes an issue where (Visual Studio for Mac 7.8.3 crashes after loading a second solution)[https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/509716/visual-studio-783-build2-crashes-after-loading-a-s.html].

Feedback

Visual Studio For Mac Free

We would love to hear from you! You can report a problem through the Report a Problem option in the Visual Studio for Mac IDE, and track your feedback in the Developer Community portal. For suggesting new features you can use Suggest a Feature, these are also tracked in the Developer Community.

Blogs

Visual Studio For Mac Download

Take advantage of the insights and recommendations available in the Developer Tools Blogs site to keep you up-to-date on all new releases and include deep dive posts on a broad range of features.

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac Release Notes History