Introduction
Many developers will spend hours every day in Microsoft Visual Studio. Learn how to customize the Visual Studio environment and use features that make developers more productive.
💡 Customizing Visual Studio is like decorating a room with trinkets, lights, and paint.
Below is an exploration of known and off-the-beaten-path features for Microsoft Visual Studio 2026.
Visual Studio color themes
Visual Studio offers a variety of color themes to personalize your development environment for developers were light or dark themes are to restrictive. There are also the ability to create own theme or use a third party theme.
📘 Microsoft documentation
Under Tools ➡️ Theme
Cascadia Code font
Using this font changes how operators appear, as shown below.
See the following article for more details.
Window layouts
Visual Studio enables you to save as many as 10 custom window layouts and quickly switch among them.
Save/restore window layout is a fantastic feature where you can, for instance, have one layout for a laptop with no tool windows or collapsed tool windows and another layout for multiple or one large screen monitors were the tool windows are fully open.
📹 YouTube video
Arrange and Dock windows
This feature allows a developer to move a window like Solution Explorer from a floating window to a fixed/docked window.
📘 Microsoft documentation
Ultra-wide monitors
Benefits: not having to switch between several monitors, along with the ability to expand the Visual Studio window layout.
Microsoft blog post on Ultra-wide monitors
Developers with poor eyesight
The default font size can make it challenging to read details in menus and tool windows on these monitors.
💡 The fix
- Under the Tools menu select Options
- All Settings > Environment > Fonts and Color
- Select Show setting for Environment
- Select a font and font size
Standard
Changed example
Customize keyboard shortcuts
The keyboard shortcuts are listed here for default installation which a developer can change an entire set of shortcuts and individual shortcuts.
Available schemas (ReSharper appears only if installed)
To change a keyboard shortcut, find the command in the list and copy the command id and paste into "show commands containing" input. Assign a new shortcut, click the Assign button followed by click the OK button
| Commands | Keyboard shortcuts | Command ID |
|---|---|---|
| Build selection | Ctrl+B (Visual Studio 2019) | Build.BuildSelection |
| Build solution | Ctrl+Shift+B | Build.BuildSolution |
| Cancel | Ctrl+Break | Build.Cancel |
| Compile | Ctrl+F7 | Build.Compile |
| Run code analysis on solution | Alt+F11 | Build.RunCodeAnalysisOnSolution |
External Tools
You can call external tools from inside Visual Studio by using the Tools menu. A few default tools are available from the Tools menu, and you can customize it by adding your own commands.
Add your own external tools to the menu bar, see the following article.
Example
There is a need to examine a view files being altered or created in the application executable folder and perhaps reset or read a log file.
Open VS Code in the current project executable folder.
Command
C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe
Arguments
.
Optimizing toolbars for your workflow
Depending on a developer's needs, toolbar menu items can be added/removed. For instance, in the screenshot below two external commands have been added.
📹 Demonstration from Microsoft
📘 Microsoft documentation
Synchronize Visual Studio settings across multiple computers
When you sign in to Visual Studio on multiple computers using the same personalization account, your settings can be synchronized across the computers.
Environment settings
Visual Studio lets you export and import environment settings. Consider backing up the exported settings file to OneDrive or a private GitHub repository so that if the developer computer crashes, the setting files are available.
Visual Studio Extensions
Extensions are add-ons that allow you to customize and enhance your experience in Visual Studio by adding new features or integrating existing tools.
Several examples
- Markdown Editor allows developers to create and modify Markdown files.
- VSColorOutput64 can change the color of a line emitted to the output window based on specified rules. The rules consist of regular expressions. Rules map to classifications which in turn map to colors.
Accessibility tips and tricks
Visual Studio has built-in accessibility features that are compatible with screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Optimize Visual Studio performance
Visual Studio may run slowly due to insufficient RAM; consider using at least 32 GB. Antivirus software can also slow it down; you can fix this by excluding Visual Studio.
Another reason is a newly installed Visual extension, which can cause performance issues. If this is the case, a developer can learn by viewing Performance Manager from the Help menu.
📘 Performance tips and tricks (Microsoft)
Summary
The information provided can help many developers feel comfortable working with Visual Studio for extended periods.
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