Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
Featured posts
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is Now Generally Available in Visual Studio 🎉
We’re excited to announce that MCP support is now GA in Visual Studio—unlocking richer, real-time context from your entire development stack and expanding the p...
Latest posts
The Visual Studio August Update is here – smarter AI, better debugging, and more control
The August 2025 update for Visual Studio 2022 (v17.14) is now available, and it’s all about helping developers stay focused, productive, and in control. Whether you're building games, tuning performance, or exploring AI, this release brings meaningful improvements that make everyday development smoother and smarter. GPT-5 support now available We're excited to announce that GPT-5 is now available in Visual Studio, bringing the latest advancements in AI directly to your development environment. With GPT-5 integration, you can leverage more powerful, accurate, and context-aware code suggestions and chat exper...
GitHub Copilot for Azure (Preview) Launches in Visual Studio 2022 with Azure MCP Support
The GitHub Copilot for Azure extension is now in Public Preview for Visual Studio 2022 (17.14+). It brings a curated set of Azure developer tools—exposed through the Azure MCP server—directly into GitHub Copilot Agent Mode in Visual Studio. The extension automatically installs and manages the Azure MCP server, so you can query resources, diagnose issues, deploy with azd, and run Azure CLI commands—all from the Copilot Chat. Ship Azure features without leaving Visual Studio. Agent-powered, MCP-enabled, no extra setup. What’s in the Public Preview? ...
Better Control over Your Copilot Code Suggestions
Copilot code completions and suggestions in the editor speed you up in your daily programming and coding activities, at every keystroke. They help you finish the line you're typing or anticipate your next edit, making your workflow smoother and faster. At the same time, editor is where you focus and put in the deep work. Based on your feedback, we understand how important it is to strike the right balance between helpful suggestions and maintaining control over your attention and workspace. We're excited to share features that give you enhanced control over your Copilot experience, so you can decide when sugge...
Bring Your Own Model to Chat in Visual Studio
We’re excited to announce that you can now bring your own language model into Visual Studio Chat. You can connect API keys from providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google) to access a wider range of models. This makes it easy to test the latest releases, customize workflows, or run on infrastructure you control. What it unlocks Getting started If you already have an API key from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, setup takes just a minute: A few important considerations: This is just the beginning. We’re expanding support for additional mo...
Improving Codebase Awareness in Visual Studio Chat
Smarter Code Search in Visual Studio: From BM25 to Semantic Search In our latest 17.14.11 release, we’ve made a significant leap forward in how we explore your code to retrieve meaningful context. Our new Remote Semantic Search integration helps you find exactly what you need faster and with greater precision than ever before. By embedding Remote Semantic Search directly into the Visual Studio Copilot code search experience, we’ve combined the power of traditional keyword search (BM25) with the deep contextual understanding of cutting-edge AI models. This means your searches go beyond just matching words, t...
From Redmond to San Diego: VS Live! Highlights, Session Examples, and What’s Next
There’s something special about hosting developers at Microsoft HQ — and this year’s Visual Studio Live! Redmond reminded me why I love these events. The energy in every room was electric. From the moment the first session kicked off, developers leaned in, asked smart, challenging questions, and took every opportunity to connect with the Product Managers and engineers from Visual Studio, Azure, and GitHub Copilot. Between sessions, the hallways were buzzing. Right after the Experts Meet & Greet, one speaker shared a story that stuck with me: “A customer came up to me and said: All those paper cuts that Ma...
GPT-5 Now Available in Visual Studio
We’re excited to share that GPT-5, OpenAI’s latest frontier model, is now rolling out in GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio. GPT-5 offers faster responses and even better performance for writing and understanding code. This release brings a new level of capability to your development workflow, making it easier to move from idea to implementation. Try it now: Click the Copilot badge in your IDE, open Chat, and select GPT-5 (Preview). Why GPT-5 Matters to you GPT-5 is OpenAI’s most advanced model to date. It delivers substantial improvements in: From building end-to-end features to understand...
Visual Studio 2015 Retirement: Support reminder for older versions of Visual Studio
Support for Visual Studio 2015 will end on October 14, 2025. If you’re using an older version of Visual Studio, we want to keep you productive and secure when using Visual Studio, and strongly recommend you upgrade to Visual Studio 2022, which brings the power of Copilot to your development workflow. It also contains key productivity improvements in the editor, built-in support for Git version control and rich integration with GitHub, AI-powered code completions, and tools for .NET 8 and 9, and .NET MAUI. Support Timeframe Reminders for older versions If you’re still using an older version of Visual Studio, her...
Smarter AI Edits in Visual Studio Copilot
When we first set out to get smarter AI edits in Visual Studio Copilot, we knew we were tackling a deeply complex problem. It wasn’t just about generating great suggestions—it was about figuring out how to seamlessly apply those suggestions to your code. While the idea seemed simple at first glance, the reality was anything but. The Complexity of Implementing AI-Generated Edits Let’s rewind to our early attempts. Copilot might give you a fantastic suggestion—a new method, a helpful refactor, or maybe even a corrected logic block. But the real challenge began when we tried to insert those changes into th...