Microsoft released Visual Studio 2022 version 17.5 Preview 1 in November 2022, and Preview 2 in December 2022. These new preview versions include several new features such as the Quick Add Dialog, Markdown preview support out-of-the-box, and colorizing editor tabs using regular expression rules.
With the release of the new Quick Add Dialog, the default shortcut for creating a new file, Ctrl + Shift + A, now opens the new simplified file creation dialog.
Several file creation options are available in this new dialog:
- Single file - Inputting a single file name just creates the single file, for example, MyClass.cs would create a new C# class file
- Multiple files with different extensions and the same file name - Inputting MyClass.(cs, md) would create two files: MyClass.cs and MyClass.md
- Folder structure - Inputting Folder1/Folder2/ would create this structure in the file tree
- Combining these options in a comma-separated list - Inputting MyClass.cs, Folder2/MyOtherClass.cs would create both the MyClass.cs file and the MyOtherClass.cs file in Folder2
Markdown editing and preview are now available by default in Visual Studio 17.5 Preview. The new Markdown editor supports all default text editing shortcuts and editor features in Visual Studio, such as multi-caret selection.
To open any *.md file in the new editor, you can right-click a markdown file, press "Open With.." and open it with "Visual Studio Markdown Editor".
Colorized tabs are available in the current release of Visual Studio 2022. The feature allows developers to colorize their tabs either by project or by file extension. Colorizing tabs by using regular expressions is now available, where developers can specify custom rules to colorize their tabs.
This new feature can be accessed by pressing the gear icon in the tabs menu and pressing "Configure Regular Expressions."
Some other notable features released in these preview versions include:
- Performance and relevancy improvements to All-in-one search (Ctrl+Q and Ctrl+T)
- Sticky Scroll feature - Enabling sticky scroll will show the method and class signatures on top of the current file. This feature can be enabled in Options > Text Editor > General > Sticky Scroll
- URL Encode and Decode, Base64 Encode and Decode and JWT Decode are now available when previewing string variable values in the debugger
The Visual Studio Development Community page, where developers can vote on bugs and features for the next Visual Studio 2022 releases, was the main source of features and bug fixes implemented in these preview releases. The community can browse planned features and bug fixes, as well as suggest their own on this resource as well.
Visual Studio releases have three different release channels:
Version 17.4 is the release on the "Current" channel, but is also one of the LTS releases, with support for it ending on July 11, 2024. Every even-numbered minor version is an LTS release, starting with version 17.0. For more information on various Visual Studio 2022 release channels, you can check the Visual Studio 2022 Release Rhythm page.