My Visual Studio

A reference of how I want my Visual Studio development environment configured.

The base configuration is for development in C#. The windows shown are the ones I use most often, the settings are the ones I changed from the defaults and the hotkeys are those I have added to the defaults.

The usage of Copilot is experimentary, I may scale it back in the future.

Layout

• Right side
  • Solution Explorer
  • Properties
  • Toolbox (when relevant)
  • Test Explorer
• Center
  • Code editor
• Bottom
  • Find Results (when relevant)
  • Output
  • Error List
  • Immediate Window
  • Task List
  • Bookmarks
  • Autos (during debugging)
  • Watch 1 (during debugging)
  • Call Stack (during debugging)
• Left side
  • Diagnostic Tools (during debugging)
  • GitHub Copilot Chat
  • Git Changes
  • Notifications

Settings

• Environment > Visual Experience
  • Color theme: Cool Breeze
• Environment > Search
  • Automatically limit search to selection
• Environment > Tabs > Document Tabs
  • Show tabs in multiple rows
  • Show pinned tabs in a separate row
  • Show Close button in the document well
  • Dirty indicator: Dot
  • Tab colorization method: Project
• Environment > Tabs > Preview Tab
  • Allow new files to be opened in the preview tab
• Projects and Solutions > General
  • Show Output window when build starts
• Projects and Solutions > Build and Run
  • On Run, when build or deployment errors occur: Do not launch
• Text Editor > General > Display
  • Show selection margin
  • Enable brace pair colorization
  • Automatically surround selections when typing quotes or brackets
• Text Editor > Advanced
  • Difference display mode: Mixed outline
  • Difference overview margin
  • Default IntelliSence completion mode: Tab-only
• Text Editor > Code Completions > General
  • Code Completion Invocation: Manual
  • Copilot Next Edit Suggestions
• Languages > Defaults > General
  • Automatic brace completion
• Debugging > General
  • Automatically close the console when debugging stops
  • Keep expanded data tips open until clicked away
• GitHub > Copilot > Source Control Integration
  • Commit message custome instructions: Summarize changes in one sentence only.
• IntelliCode > General
  • C# Suggestions
• Windows Forms Designer > General > Refactoring
  • Enable refactoring on rename

Hotkeys

• Ctrl + O: Ask.Copilot (Text Editor)
• Ctrl + N: Edit.NextSuggestion (Text Editor)

Extensions

• Output enhancer