Tutorial: First look at the Visual Studio IDE
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac Visual Studio Code
In this 5-10 minute introduction to the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE), we'll take a tour of some of the windows, menus, and other UI features.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
Start window
The first thing you'll see after you open Visual Studio is the start window. The start window is designed to help you "get to code" faster. It has options to clone or check out code, open an existing project or solution, create a new project, or simply open a folder that contains some code files.
If this is the first time you're using Visual Studio, your recent projects list will be empty.
If you work with non-MSBuild based codebases, you'll use the Open a local folder option to open your code in Visual Studio. For more information, see Develop code in Visual Studio without projects or solutions. Otherwise, you can create a new project or clone a project from a source provider such as GitHub or Azure DevOps.
The Continue without code option simply opens the Visual Studio development environment without any specific project or code loaded. You might choose this option to join a Live Share session or attach to a process for debugging. You can also press Esc to close the start window and open the IDE.
Start window
The first thing you'll see after you open Visual Studio is the start window. The start window is designed to help you "get to code" faster. It has options to clone or check out code, open an existing project or solution, create a new project, or simply open a folder that has some code files.
If this is the first time you're using Visual Studio, your recent projects list will be empty.
If you work with codebases that don't use MSBuild, you'll use the Open a local folder option to open your code in Visual Studio. For more information, see Develop code in Visual Studio without projects or solutions. Otherwise, you can create a new project or clone a project from a source provider such as GitHub or Azure DevOps.
The Continue without code option opens the Visual Studio development environment without any specific project or code loaded. You might choose this option to join a Live Share session or attach to a process for debugging. You can also press Esc to close the start window and open the IDE.
Create a project
To continue exploring Visual Studio's features, let's create a new project.
On the start window, choose Create a new project.
The Create a new project window opens and shows several project templates. A template contains the basic files and settings required for a given project type.
Here, you can search, filter, and pick a project template. It also shows a list of your recently used project templates.
In the search box at the top, type in console to filter the list of project types to those that contain "console" in their name. Further refine the search results by picking C# (or another language of your choice) from the All language drop-down list.
If you selected C#, Visual Basic, or F# as your language, select the Console Application template, and then choose Next. (If you selected a different language, just pick any template. The UI we'll be looking at is similar for all programming languages.)
On the Configure your new project window, accept the default project name and location, and then choose Next.
In the Additional information window, verify that .NET Core 3.1 appears in the Target Framework drop-down menu, and then click Create.
The project is created and a file named Program.cs opens in the Editor window. The Editor shows the contents of files and is where you'll do most of your coding work in Visual Studio.
On the start window, choose Create a new project.
The Create a new project window opens and shows several project templates. A template contains the basic files and settings required for a given project type.
Here, you can search, filter, and pick a project template. The Create a new project window also shows a list of your recently used project templates.
In the search box at the top, type in console to filter the list of project types to those that contain "console" in their name. Further refine the search results by picking C# (or another language of your choice) from the All language dropdown list.
If you selected C#, Visual Basic, or F# as your language, select the Console Application template, and then choose Next. If you selected a different language, just pick any template.
On the Configure your new project window, accept the default project name and location, and then choose Next.
In the Additional information window, ensure that .NET 6.0 appears in the Framework dropdown menu, and then choose Create.
The project is created. Select the code file Program.cs in the Solution Explorer window, which is typically on the right-hand side of Visual Studio.
The file Program.cs opens in the Editor window. The Editor shows the contents of files and is where you'll do most of your coding work in Visual Studio.
Solution Explorer
Solution Explorer, which is typically on the right-hand side of Visual Studio, shows you a graphical representation of the hierarchy of files and folders in your project, solution, or code folder. You can browse the hierarchy and navigate to a file in Solution Explorer.
Solution Explorer shows you a graphical representation of the hierarchy of files and folders in your project, solution, or code folder. You can browse the hierarchy and select a file to open it in the Editor.
Menus
The menu bar along the top of Visual Studio groups commands into categories. For example, the Project menu contains commands related to the project you're working in. On the Tools menu, you can customize how Visual Studio behaves by selecting Options, or add features to your installation by selecting Get Tools and Features.
Error List
The Error List shows you errors, warning, and messages about the current state of your code. If there are errors (like a missing brace or semicolon) in your file or anywhere in your project, they're listed here.
To open the Error List window, choose the View menu, and then select Error List.
Output window
The Output window shows you output messages from building your project and from your source control provider.
Let's build the project to see some build output. From the Build menu, choose Build Solution. The Output window automatically obtains focus and shows a successful build message.
Search box
The search box is a quick and easy way to find just about anything in Visual Studio. You can enter some text related to what you want to do, and it will show you a list of options that are relevant to the text. For example, imagine you want to increase the verbosity of the build output to display more details about what the build is doing. Here's how you might do that:
Press Ctrl+Q to activate the search box in the upper part of the IDE.
Type verbosity into the search box. From the displayed results, choose Change MSBuild verbosity.
The Options dialog box opens to the Build and Run options page.
Under MSBuild project build output verbosity, choose Normal, and then click OK.
Build the project again by right-clicking on the ConsoleApp1 project in Solution Explorer and choosing Rebuild from the context menu.
This time the Output window shows more verbose logging from the build process, including which files were copied where.
Press Ctrl+Q to activate the search box in the upper part of the IDE.
Type verbosity into the search box. From the displayed results, choose Change MSBuild verbosity.
The Options dialog box opens to the Build and Run options page.
Under MSBuild project build output verbosity, choose Normal, and then choose OK.
Build the project again by right-clicking on the ConsoleApp1 project in Solution Explorer and choosing Rebuild from the context menu.
This time the Output window shows more verbose logging from the build process, including which files were copied where.
Send Feedback menu
Should you encounter any problems while you're using Visual Studio, or if you have suggestions for how to improve the product, you can use the Send Feedback menu near the top of the Visual Studio window.
Should you run into any problems while you're using Visual Studio, or if you have suggestions for how to improve the product, you can let us know. To do so, choose the Send Feedback button near the upper-right corner of the IDE and use one of the feedback options in the Send Feedback menu.
Next steps
We've looked at just a few of the features of Visual Studio to get acquainted with the user interface. To explore further:
See also
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