Register a tool window

Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

You can register your tool windows using ProvideToolWindowAttribute and ProvideToolWindowVisibilityAttribute.

Example

[ProvideToolWindow(typeof(PersistedWindowPane), Style = MsVsShell.VsDockStyle.Tabbed, Window = "3ae79031-e1bc-11d0-8f78-00a0c9110057")]
[ProvideToolWindow(typeof(DynamicWindowPane), PositionX=250, PositionY=250, Width=160, Height=180, Transient=true)]
[ProvideToolWindowVisibility(typeof(DynamicWindowPane), /*UICONTEXT_SolutionExists*/"f1536ef8-92ec-443c-9ed7-fdadf150da82")]
[ProvideMenuResource(1000, 1)]
[PackageRegistration(UseManagedResourcesOnly = true)]
[Guid("01069CDD-95CE-4620-AC21-DDFF6C57F012")]
public class PackageToolWindow : Package
{

In the code above, the ProvideToolWindowAttribute registers the PersistedWindowPane and DynamicWindowPane tool windows with Visual Studio. The persisted tool window is docked and tabbed with Solution Explorer, and the dynamic window is given a default starting position and size. The dynamic window is made transient, which indicates that it is not created on startup. This writes a DontForceCreate value in the ToolWindows key in the system registry. For more information, see Tool window display configuration.