Visual Studio Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6 Release Notes

  • Article

Developer Community | System Requirements | Compatibility | Distributable Code | Documentation | Blogs | Servicing

For information on the system requirements see the see Mac System Requirements and Mac Platform Targeting and Compatibility guides.

To learn more about other related downloads, see the Downloads page.

What's New in Visual Studio 2019 for Mac

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Releases

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Blog Posts

The Visual Studio Blog is the official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team. You can find in-depth information about the Visual Studio 2019 for Mac releases in the following posts:

Release Highlights

  • In this version of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac, we added an integrated terminal, brought initial support for Blazor WebAssembly projects, updated the identity libraries in order to improve the sign in experience, and added support for building and running gRPC projects.
  • Visual Studio for Mac 8.6.8 or newer now support running on the macOS Big Sur developer preview. See Known Issues for additional information.

Known Issues

Refer to the Known Issues section.

Feedback and Suggestions

We would love to hear from you! You can report a problem through the Report a Problem option in Visual Studio for Mac IDE. You can track your feedback, including suggestions, in the Developer Community portal.

Release Notes

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.8 (8.6.8.2)

released July 28, 2020

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.7 (8.6.7.2)

released July 21, 2020

Xamarin

  • Support for Xcode 11.6.

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.6 (8.6.6.11)

released July 16, 2020

Web and Azure

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.5 (8.6.5.23)

released June 23, 2020

Shell and Tools

Test Tools

Version Control

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.4 (8.6.4.14)

released June 16, 2020

Shell and Tools

Web and Azure

  • We fixed an issue where feedback surveys could not be taken without being signed in to the IDE.
  • We updated the .NET Core SDK (3.1.301 SDK and 2.1.19 runtime).

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.3 (8.6.3.30)

released June 9, 2020

Debugger

Shell and Tools

Version Control

  • We fixed an issue where pushing when remote contains changes that don't exist locally takes a long time eventually aborting with errors.

Web and Azure

Xamarin

  • We fixed a few instances where VoiceOver would read labels of elements on Wizard template pages twice.

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.2 (8.6.2.6)

released June 2, 2020

Debugger

Project System

Shell and Tools

  • We fixed an issue where updating add-ins using the extension manager fails.

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6.1 (8.6.1.26)

released May 27, 2020

Debugger

  • We fixed the color contrast ratio of the close button inside the locals pad.
  • We fixed an issue where a breakpoint was not hit after using the toggle command not at the beinging of a line or a statement.

Project System

Shell and Tools

  • We fixed an issue in the Terminal which might cause a crash.

Version Control

  • We fixed an issue where cloning a Git repository with invalid credentials caused a long delay.

Web and Azure

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6 (8.6.0.4517)

released May 19, 2020

New Features

Terminal

Visual Studio for Mac now includes an integrated terminal. This feature has been a popular request and simplifies many common developer scenarios by allowing you to remain in Visual Studio for Mac. The integrated terminal uses the default system shell and integrates with the system shell's command history.

Integrated Terminal Experience Graphic
Integrated terminal experience in Visual Studio for Mac

There are a few ways to open the Terminal:

  • View > Pads > Terminal menu
  • Ctrl + ~ keyboard shortcut (and Ctrl + ‘, to match Windows).
  • Ctrl + ` will toggle the Terminal pad to be shown or hidden.
  • Search in search bar: terminal (handled by menu name)
  • Using a “New Terminal” button in the Terminal pad.

The terminal includes the following features:

  • Integrated search, including case sensitivity, regex, and whole word searching
  • Cycle through command history by pressing the up arrow key
  • Multiple instances
  • Localization support
  • Light and dark theme support

Blazor WebAssembly

You'll now also find templates for Blazor WebAssembly projects built into Visual Studio for Mac. Initial support for Blazor WebAssembly does not include support for debugging, which will come in a future release.

For more information on getting started with Blazor WebAssembly in Visual Studio for Mac, take a look at the Building a Progressive Web App with Blazor blog post.

gRPC Support

Visual Studio for Mac 2019 version 8.6 adds support for building and running gRPC projects with ASP.NET Core hosting support as well as C# tooling support for .proto files.

gRPC is a language agnostic, high-performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework. The main benefits of gRPC are:

  • Modern, high-performance, lightweight RPC framework.
  • Contract-first API development, using Protocol Buffers by default, allowing for language agnostic implementations.
  • Tooling available for many languages to generate strongly-typed servers and clients.
  • Supports client, server, and bi-directional streaming calls.
  • Reduced network usage with Protobuf binary serialization.

You can create a new gRPC service project, use the new gRPC template in the New Project dialog.

gRPC project selected graphic
gRPC project selected in Visual Studio for Mac's New Project dialog

At the moment, Visual Studio for Mac does not support the creation of gRPC service clients. This functionality will be included in a future release. To create gRPC service clients, use the dotnet-grpc command line tool. More info can be found at Manage Protobuf references with dotnet-grpc.

Debugger

  • We added a yellow arrow icon that allows drag and drop to Set Next Statement while debugging. While the debugger is paused, an arrow in the margin shows which line of code will be executed next. You can click and drag the arrow to a different line of code to change which statement will be executed. You can achieve the same thing by also right-clicking on a line of code and selecting Set Next Statement from the context menu.
Animaed image graphic
Animated image demonstrating the use of the drag and drop to Set Next Statement feature
  • We ported the Breakpoints, Threads, and Call Stack pads to native Cocoa controls.
  • We added the ability to add a watch from the editor using the context menu.

Editor

  • QuickInfo toolltips now show <returns> and <value> documentation.
  • We renamed the "Quick Fixes…" context menu to "Quick Actions and Refactorings…".
  • We updated syntax highlighting to better match behavior on Windows, including extension methods.
  • We reduced the delay before showing quick fix previews.
  • There is now a quick fix to switch between verbatim and regular string forms.

Project System

  • It is now possible to use ~ as the start of the path when creating new projects.

Shell

  • Visual Studio for Mac now has new identity libraries that should ease many of the issues that users have faced signing in. In addition, Visual Studio for Mac now supports device code authentication and system browser. You can enable these two options in Preferences should you need them. As a result of the new authentication flow, users who have been signed in previously will need to re-authenticate.

Version Control

  • We renamed many Version Control commands to better match Git terminology and reorginazed the Version Control menus to make the most used commands more discoverible.
Menu demonstrating new changes graphic
Menu demonstrating new changes in the version control menu

Web and Azure

  • We added support for .NET Core 5.0 Preview 2.
  • We updated to the latest .NET Core 3.1.4 release.
  • We bumped .NET Core runtime to the latest 2.1.

Xamarin

  • We re-implemented the plist source editor using native cocoa controls.

Bug Fixes

Debugger

  • We fixed an issue where char[], byte[], and sbyte[] types would not be shown in the value visualize for .NET Core projects.
  • We fixed an issue where iOS "Debugger Operation Failed".
  • We fixed an issue where threads are not ordered by ID in the Threads pad.
  • We fixed an issue where it was not possible to attach the debugger to a .NET Core project when project was run without debugging from Visual Studio for Mac.
  • We fixed an issue where editing a variable value did not update the value in the visualizer.
  • We fixed an issue where the modify breakpoint button was missing.
  • We fixed an issue where the font size while editing in a pad was too big when the main editor font is scaled up.
  • We fixed an issue where it was not possible to remove a watch item using the backspace key.

Editor

Project System

  • We fixed an issue where the build output would not be cleared when loading or creating a new solution.
  • We changed the default build option to never jump to the first build error.
  • We fixed an issue where deleting multiple files would not delete all the files, only the first file.
  • We fixed an issue causing the IDE to hang on shutdown that affected users with large projects.

Shell

  • We fixed several conflicts in the default and Xcode keybinding schemes.
  • We added missing default key bindings for the Save All and Save As commands.
  • We fixed a crash caused by a race condition in the Property Pad.
  • We fixed an issue that caused a hang on startup for some users.
  • We fixed an issue where the Properties Window is blank when using the dark theme on macOS 10.13 and older.

Terminal (since Preview 1)

  • We fixed an issue where content was autoscrolling if the user scrolls up a little.
  • We fixed an issue where content can be dropped if the reading buffer does not contain a full character.
  • We fixed an issue where word and line selection was missing.
  • We fixed an issue where after closing Terminal pad, then clicking "Open In Terminal Pad", the "Terminal" Pad wasn't shown.
  • We fixed an issue where zooming text when the Terminal pad is docked may zoom the text editor instead.
  • We fixed an issue where Terminal windows shows light theme when Visual Studio for Mac is set to dark theme.
  • We fixed an issue where the user cannot move the cursor in vi in Terminal.
  • We fixed an issue where mouse events may be reported and shown on the terminal view after exiting console apps.

Test Tools

  • We fixed an issue that would prevent some tests from showing in the Tests pad under some conditions.

Version Control

Web and Azure

  • We fixed an issue with how Empty ASP.NET Core projects show in recently used projects list.
  • We fixed an issue where creating a new key vault in Connected Services failed with error: An invalid value was provided for 'acessPolicies'.
  • We fixed an issue where moving folder with nested files did not work.
  • We fixed an issue with DotNetCore console app adding empty ASPNETCORE_URLS environment variable.
  • We fixed an issue where "New" button didn't work on the "Publish to Azure App Service" dialog.
  • We fixed an issue in the Publish to Azure dialog when loading subscriptions failed.
  • We fixed several issues in the Scaffolding dialog that was leading it to a noop UI state.
  • We fixed an issue where the Scaffolding dialog allowed the user to enter invalid data.
  • We fixed an issue where solutions with multiple projects couldn't be loaded if any contained launchSettings.json without applicationUrls.
  • We fixed an issue with duplicated JSON files in the solution pad.
  • We fixed an issue where adding scaffolding resulted in could not install dotnet-aspnet-codegenerator.
  • We fixed an issue with IntelliSense not working for files using Protobuf-generated code.
  • We fixed an issue with not being able to create NUnit-based projects.
  • We fixed an issue where "api controller with entity framework" scaffold generates "MVC controller with entity framework".
  • We fixed an issue where a published site was stuck at "loading…" after publishing a Blazor WASM application.
  • We fixed an issue with file nesting behavior when renaming files.
  • We fixed an error where a "Building failed with Error MSB3644" notice would show after retargeting a .NET 5 project to .NET Core 3.1.
  • We fixed an issue where Blazor client-side projects fail to debug due to expectation of Exe output.
  • We fixed an issue with Azure Functions where debugger operations failed with a "Value cannot be null" error.
  • We fixed an issue where publishing a Web Application failed after adding a reference to a Razor Class Library project.

Xamarin

Known Issues

The following is a list of all existing known issues in Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.6:

  • If you are not able to start your gRPC project on macOS see Unable to start ASP.NET Core gRPC app on macOS.
  • As a result of the new identity libraries to improve the sign in experience for Visual Studio for Mac, all users who were signed in previously will need to re-authenticate.
  • If you run into node-gyp build errors with the ASP.NET Core React and Angular SPA project templates then see the node-gyp installation notes for workarounds.
  • In rare cases, it's possible to be up to date with everything but the .NET Core 3.1.300 SDK. If you enter into this configuration and update to .NET Core 3.1.300 using the updater, the notification to update the .NET Core SDK will not disappear until the IDE is restarted.
  • Xamarin developers on macOS Big Sur will not be able to compile and run their projects at this time. This will be supported in an upcoming release.
Top of Page