The latest updates in Visual Studio 2022 introduced features specifically designed to improve how you manage extensions. These updates offer tools that help you automate processes, provide detailed controls for configuration, and enhance the user interface to streamline your development workflows.
Seamless auto updates
Visual Studio now automatically triggers updates whenever you open the Extension Manager window. This ensures you are consistently working with the latest features and fixes without needing to manually initiate updates.
Infobar notifications for applied updates
An Infobar will now appear when updates are applied, reminding you to restart Visual Studio. This ensures the updates take effect without requiring additional steps on your part.
Auto update settings on the extension page
Settings for auto updates have been integrated directly into the extension page, making it easier to access and configure them. You can quickly adjust preferences without navigating through multiple menus.
Filter by pending changes
A new “Pending” category has been added to highlight pending updates or modifications. This feature helps developers like you stay informed about changes that require attention..
Additional auto update settings in Tools > Options
For better accessibility, auto update settings are also available under **Tools > Options**. This provides an alternative way to manage your preferences in a centralized location.
Simplified settings interface
The user interface for managing settings has been redesigned to reduce complexity. With fewer clicks and clearer options, configuring your environment is now more intuitive.
Excluded extensions list
An excluded extensions list is now available, automatically populating with extensions you choose to exclude from automatic updates. This feature is especially useful for extensions critical to your workflow, where manual update control is preferred.
Conclusion
These enhancements in Visual Studio 2022 aim to make extension management more user-friendly and efficient. By automating frequent tasks and providing more granular control, these updates contribute to a streamlined development experience that increase your productivity!
We appreciate the feedback from our developer community, which plays a vital role in shaping these updates. Please continue to share your insights to help us improve Visual Studio with every release.
Any chance we could have an easy way of sharing extensions across machines please? Ideally tied to our MS or GitHub login perhaps? In the modern world of using multiple VMs for Development it’s a pain having to install and maintain extensions across several machines when I just want the same environment on them all.
That’s a great suggestion I’ve been mulling around. There is a way to do this today by creating an extension which has dependencies on all the other extensions you care about. Then you just install that extension and it should pull everything else.
As a bonus, you can upload it to marketplace and if you install it from there it’ll get added to your “Roamed” extensions tab. That way you can easily install it in the future on new machines once you log into your VS account.
Thank you for allowing comments again on the Visual Studio blog. 😊🙏