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Microsoft begins sunsetting process for Visual Studio for Mac

Microsoft retiring Visual Studio for Mac in 2024

In an effort to redirect its resources elsewhere, Microsoft has begun the process of retiring Visual Studio for Mac IDE.

According to Microsoft, Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 will continue to be supported for another 12 months, until August 31, 2024.

After support ends, Microsoft suggests using Visual Studio IDE via Windows on a virtual machine, either on the Mac or in the cloud. It notes that this option will cover most developers' needs, such as legacy project support.

Cross-platform compatible solutions exist, such as C#, Dev Kit, .NET MAUI, and Unity extensions for Visual Studio Code. These extensions operate natively on macOS. While they're currently in preview, Microsoft notes that the experience will be improved as "they move from preview to GA and beyond."



8 Comments

StrangeDays 8 Years · 12986 comments

Weird, just a year ago they were doing a public beta on VS for Mac.

Doodpants 8 Years · 57 comments

Weird, just a year ago they were doing a public beta on VS for Mac.

A year ago they were doing a public beta for a particular version of VS for Mac, but it's been an actual released/supported product for several years before that. And it actually existed as Xamarin Studio before Microsoft acquired Xamarin and rebranded it, so it's technically been around since 2016.

bestkeptsecret 13 Years · 4289 comments

For me VS for Mac was useless without SQL Server for Mac. I was excited when the IDE was released, but lack of SQL Server for Mac meant I had to stick to my Wintel PC for work.

lowededwookie 16 Years · 1175 comments

That's a shame because I was using it for web development. A free, powerful IDE for web development was much appreciated.

Anyone got any good ideas for replacing it? Preferably free. I'm not going to make use of it more than for my personal website.

michelb76 8 Years · 700 comments

That's a shame because I was using it for web development. A free, powerful IDE for web development was much appreciated.

Anyone got any good ideas for replacing it? Preferably free. I'm not going to make use of it more than for my personal website.

Are you not confusing it with VS Code? That's not going anywhere.