Microsoft added bring-your-own-model support to Copilot Chat in Visual Studio and made the Model Context Protocol generally available in the IDE, expanding model choice and enabling governed connections to internal tools and data.
GitHub Copilot’s upgraded coding agent, now accessible through a new agents panel, lets Visual Studio and VS Code developers offload coding chores to AI and track results across GitHub’s ecosystem.
Microsoft is rolling out a new Python Environments extension in VS Code, now reaching 20% of stable channel users. The tool provides a dedicated panel for creating, managing and assigning environments, with APIs for third-party integration, while also laying groundwork for community-driven environment manager support.
Microsoft used the Visual Studio Live! keynote at its Redmond headquarters to unveil the future of its flagship IDE, including monthly updates, a new major version, deeper AI and Copilot integration, and user-driven enhancements aimed at boosting speed, flexibility, and productivity.
The 2025 Reader's Choice Awards recognize the solutions developers themselves rely on every day to build, test, deploy and maintain world-class applications.
- By Visual Studio Magazine Editors
- 08/14/2025
The update includes a new XAML Source Generator for .NET MAUI and PipeReader support in System.Text.Json. The release also delivers a range of improvements across desktop, web, and libraries, plus numerous fixes and optimizations after data/desktop devs were dissed last month in a "small" release.
Microsoft today announced OpenAI's latest and greatest frontier AI model is now available to the GitHub Copilot tool within the company's flagship Visual Studio IDE, just days after it was released.
The July 2025 update to Visual Studio Code (v1.103) introduces Chat Checkpoints for restoring AI-driven code sessions and a set of enhancements to the Model Context Protocol (MCP), boosting tool capacity, reliability, and configurability in agent mode.
Microsoft is rolling out OpenAI's new open-weight models across Azure AI Foundry and Windows AI Foundry, empowering developers to run, customize, and deploy AI on their terms--from cloud to edge.
"The newer AI-enabled editors like Claude Code and Cursor are attracting interest from developers already using the industry standard IDE, VS Code."
Microsoft's top developers are taking deep dives into tech ranging from AI apps to .NET MAUI at next week's Visual Studio Live! dev conference in Redmond, with live commentary from the company's Visual Studio Toolbox video team for some Tuesday sessions.
The update aims to streamline development with a native AOT-compiled CLI for application scaffolding, running, and configuration.
The tool provides automated code fixes, predefined migration tasks, and recommendations for Azure services, accelerating enterprise cloud modernization.
TypeScript 5.9 RC arrives with import defer for deferred module evaluation, stable Node.js 20 module targeting, and refined editor hover tooltips. It also brings compiler performance gains and notable breaking changes for developers -- GA within a week.
Devs weren't shy about responding to a recent social media post from the VS Code Team's Burke Holland, who asked for feedback on the editor, including GitHub Copilot.
AWS has launched Kiro, a spec-driven, agentic AI IDE based on Visual Studio Code. It joins a growing lineup of VS Code forks built for AI-assisted development, and it arrives just as Microsoft pushes to make the open-source core of VS Code fully AI-native.
Two of the three offerings bring AI-assisted productivity to .NET and cross-platform app developers. Highlights include AI coding assistants, low-code view generators, new UI components, and enhanced design-time tools.
In what Microsoft called a “relatively small” release, .NET 10 Preview 6 delivered its biggest set of updates to ASP.NET Core and Blazor. New features include required component parameters, JavaScript interop enhancements, and support for state persistence in Blazor Server apps. Other areas like .NET MAUI and EF Core saw targeted improvements focused on UI styling, accessibility, and standardized configuration conventions. Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2 is now officially supported, enabling key tools like .NET MAUI development and C# Hot Reload.
The .NET MAUI team is pursuing a dream scenario where GitHub Copilot handles a straightforward issue all by itself with just minimal initial instructions.
VS Code’s June 2025 update supercharges GitHub Copilot with new chat customization tools, smarter inline completions, and an open-source Copilot Chat extension that makes AI-assisted coding more transparent and flexible.