Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 public preview coming in next few months

Microsoft announces that Visual Studio 2022 is making the leap to 64-bit and feature a user interface refresh specific to macOS.

The app is set to get some significant upgrades, starting with its leap to 64-bit architecture. Microsoft states that the updated version of Visual Studio should be faster, more stable, and lightweight.

"Our goal with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac is to make a modern .NET IDE tailored for the Mac that delivers the productive experience you've come to love in Visual Studio," wrote Microsoft's Amanda Silver in a developer blog. "We're working to move Visual Studio for Mac to native macOS UI, which means it will come with better performance and reliability."

"It also means that Visual Studio for Mac can take full advantage of all the built-in macOS accessibility features," she continued. "We're updating the menus and terminology across the IDE to make Visual Studio more consistent between Mac and Windows."

Visual Studio 2022 will get a complete user interface overhaul for those on macOS, making it compatible with native macOS UI. The app should be more reliable and perform better as a result. The macOS version will also see GitHub integration, including the introduction of a Git Changes tool window.

Other significant changes include full support for .NET 6 and its unified framework web, client, and mobile apps, added support for C++ workload and C++20 tooling, and real-time collaboration features.

While it hasn't given a concrete date for the release, Microsoft's announcement states that the first public preview of Visual Studio 2022 will "be released this summer."

5 Comments

dewme 5739 comments · 10 Years

About 3 years ago

This will be a very big deal, especially the availability of .NET 6.0 with Mac and Mac Catalyst support for both x64 Intel and Apple Silicon.

dk49 284 comments · 9 Years

dewme said:

This will be a very big deal, especially the availability of .NET 6.0 with Mac and Mac Catalyst support for both x64 Intel and Apple Silicon.

Who's really using .NET these days?

maciekskontakt 1168 comments · 15 Years

dk49 said:

dewme said:

This will be a very big deal, especially the availability of .NET 6.0 with Mac and Mac Catalyst support for both x64 Intel and Apple Silicon.

Who's really using .NET these days?

Everybody and maybe you should stick out your head out of small yard. You will not find single iOS or macOS in financial business, but you will most of Java and .NET. All your finances run on them so, do not judge based on what you use in your home attic.

That is very interesting. .NET already runs on Linux as well. Microsoft is reaching different levels and is competitive to other technology solutions. Considering that it even opened up to PostrgeSQL in addition to porting SQLServer to Linux platform this is real world of opening options now. While Apple hardware is not really commodity to run any business servers or enterprise except boutique publishing and graphics, this will at least give option of using macOS for development. I think they may be into mobile development, but honestly they probably target much wider goals.

dk49 said:

dewme said:

This will be a very big deal, especially the availability of .NET 6.0 with Mac and Mac Catalyst support for both x64 Intel and Apple Silicon.

Who's really using .NET these days?

According to Stack Overflow's latest developer survey, of around 60K developers worldwide, about 35% of all developers worldwide are using .NET and about 27% of developers worldwide are using .NET Core. The only framework with a higher percentage of developers using it is node.js with 51%. On the language front C# has around 32%, C++ has 21% and Swift comes in around 6%.

Keep in mind that Windows still has a massive market share advantage over macOS, and even more so in business critical software applications that you will never see mentioned in an Apple-centric site like AI.