What's happening to Visual Studio for Mac?

Article
12/01/2023

Visual Studio for Mac is scheduled for retirement by August 31, 2024 in accordance with Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy. Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 will continue to be supported until August 31, 2024, with servicing updates for security issues and updated platforms from Apple. We recommend that you switch to a stable build for the latest security and reliability updates.

While the decision has been made to retire Visual Studio for Mac, we remain committed to our developers on Mac and .NET MAUI with alternatives like the C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code and other extensions you can use to take advantage of our ongoing investments in .NET development.

Support timeline

The following notes outline the timeline for support.

Key dates	What's happens when
On or before Aug 31, 2024	Users can still: Create and maintain Mono, .NET 6, and .NET 7 applications. You can also continue to develop, maintain, and publish your apps to app stores. Access Microsoft Customer Service and Support for Visual Studio for Mac. If you have any support agreements, you can continue to have access to technical support during this period. Install product updates we release so you can reliably maintain and publish your mobile applications using the latest Xcode, iOS, and Android versions. Microsoft also releases security updates for Visual Studio for Mac. Microsoft doesn't plan to add support for .NET 8 or C#12 to Visual Studio for Mac. We won't extend to any other workloads before retirement either.
After Aug 31, 2024	Visual Studio for Mac will no longer be supported or maintained after August 31, 2024. Visual Studio for Mac will still be available as a legacy installation only via my.visualstudio.com for users with Visual Studio subscriptions.

Key dates

What's happens when

On or before
Aug 31, 2024

Users can still:

Create and maintain Mono, .NET 6, and .NET 7 applications. You can also continue to develop, maintain, and publish your apps to app stores.
Access Microsoft Customer Service and Support for Visual Studio for Mac. If you have any support agreements, you can continue to have access to technical support during this period.
Install product updates we release so you can reliably maintain and publish your mobile applications using the latest Xcode, iOS, and Android versions. Microsoft also releases security updates for Visual Studio for Mac.

Microsoft doesn't plan to add support for .NET 8 or C#12 to Visual Studio for Mac. We won't extend to any other workloads before retirement either.

After Aug 31, 2024

Visual Studio for Mac will no longer be supported or maintained after August 31, 2024. Visual Studio for Mac will still be available as a legacy installation only via my.visualstudio.com for users with Visual Studio subscriptions.

Preview vs stable builds of Visual Studio for Mac

There will be no preview builds now that Visual Studio for Mac is on track for retirement on August 31, 2024. The preview channel is also no longer being updated.

We recommend that you switch to a stable build for the latest security and reliability updates. Here's how:

Download the stable Visual Studio for Mac installer.
Run the installer.
Launch Visual Studio from /Applications/Visual Studio.app.
You can now delete /Applications/Visual Studio (Preview).app.

Alternative options for developing on the Mac

Visual Studio Code is a great place for cloud-native .NET development on the Mac with things like Azure Functions, and more. As of 2023, premier support is available in Visual Studio Code for .NET cloud, .NET MAUI, and Mobile C# development through the C# Dev Kit. Additionally, the C# Dev Kit for .NET MAUI offers support for designing, editing, and debugging Unity scripts as well. These extensions operate natively across all supported platforms, including macOS, and the experience using these are continuously improved as they move from preview to General Availability and beyond. We are continuing to invest in making these a great experience for C#, .NET MAUI and Unity development on Visual Studio Code. We encourage you submit suggestions and report issues for these extensions in the Visual Studio Code GitHub project repository.

Visual Studio continues to be the premier tool of choice for .NET/C# development. If you prefer to use a full-fledged IDE, you can use the same license for Visual Studio for Mac on Visual Studio on Windows in a VM either on a Mac or in the cloud. You can use VM hosts like Parallels to set up Windows and work in Visual Studio (Windows). A cloud-hosted VM from Microsoft Dev Box provides access to the full power of Visual Studio through your Web or native RDP client from a Mac without the overhead of running a virtual machine on your local machine.

Get support

Visual Studio for Mac is licensed under Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft Customer Service and Support remains available through Visual Studio for Mac’s end-of-life date. You’ll also receive security updates to ensure you can continue to build and publish your existing applications with Visual Studio for Mac.

You can continue to submit Developer Community tickets to report bugs with Visual Studio for Mac before May 2024, but note that Microsoft won't consider suggestions for new features and extended workload support. Additionally, Microsoft might not respond to every ticket, your input is used to help steer investments to ensure Visual Studio for Mac is a quality, performant, and reliable IDE through its end-of-life date. We want to encourage folks to upvote relevant tickets as that increases visibility on our end.

Next steps

Try the C# Dev Kit for premier support in Visual Studio Code for .NET cloud, .NET MAUI, and Mobile C# development.