Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Preview Release Notes

09/14/2020

7 minutes to read

In this article

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

Get the Preview

Important Get the Preview of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac by updating to the Preview channel.

This release is not "go-live" and not intended for use on production computers or for creating production code.

To learn more about Visual Studio for Mac, see Mac System Requirements and Mac Platform Targeting and Compatibility.

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

What's New in 8.8 Preview

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview Releases

September 14, 2020 – Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview 3

August 25, 2020 – Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview 2

August 5, 2020 – Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview 1

Release Highlights

Visual Studio for Mac 8.8 Preview 2 adds support for debugging Blazor WebAssembly projects.

Visual Studio for Mac 8.8 Preview 2 adds support for accessing Azure DevOps NuGet package sources using the signed in account without the need to use a personal access token (PAT).

Visual Studio for Mac 8.8 Preview 1 or newer now support running on the macOS Big Sur developer preview. See Known Issues for additional information.

We added functionality to Visual Studio for Mac to warn users when low disk space will degrade the experience.

Known Issues

Refer to the Known Issues section.

Feedback & 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

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview 3 (8.8.0.2120)

released September 14, 2020

We have ported the Assembly Browser to the new Editor.

We have reimplemented the Errors pad and moved the build output to a separate pad.

We have improved overall performance and reliability.

Source Code Editing

We have fixed an issue where an Enum could not be used as a nullable type in generic interfaces.

Version Control

Web and Azure

We fixed an issue with breakpoints not hitting when debugging a Blazor WebAssembly Application.

Xamarin

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview 2 (8.8.0.1532)

released August 25, 2020

New Features

Debug Blazor WebAssembly projects

Visual Studio for Mac now includes full support for debugging Blazor WebAssembly projects, giving you the option to set breakpoints, watches, navigate your code using step and skip commands, and more.

Examining a watched variable while debugging a Blazor WebAssembly application

For more information on debugging in Visual Studio for Mac, see Debugging with Visual Studio for Mac.

Web and Azure

We added support for .NET 5 preview 8.

We added integrated support for accessing NuGet Azure DevOps package sources using the signed in account without requiring a personal access token (PAT).

Bug Fixes

Debugger

We fixed an issue where the debugger would prefer an imported class over a local variable with the same name.

Project System

We fixed an issue that prevented users from canceling a solution load operation.

We improved the performance of the Assembly Viewer.

Editor

We fixed a problem where new F# projects would not restore and build due to the FSharp.Core NuGet package being unavailable.

Web and Azure

We fixed an issue with solution file generation that caused a compatibility problem with Visual Studio on Windows.

We fixed an issue where .razor files would incorrectly show a “Using directive is unnecessary" error.

We fixed an issue where IntelliSense for classes from a new Razor class library project were not available in .razor files.

We fixed an issue preventing Azure subscriptions being found when publishing to Azure Publish to Azure.

We fixed an issue where Azure subscriptions were not found.

We fixed a crash in the Razor editor.

Xamarin

We updated the Android SDK Tools path to support the new "cmdline-tools" path.

Hot reload updated the minimum required Xamarin.Forms version to 4.6.0.923 when using incremental.

Other

We improved startup performance of the IDE.

We improved the performance of closing a solution.

We fixed an issue where vstool would not return the exact id of an extension which can then be used for disabling/enabling the extension.

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8 Preview 1 (8.8.0.493)

released August 5, 2020

Note This release of Visual Studio for Mac now supports running on the macOS Big Sur developer beta builds. If you're already on Big Sur and can't use the updater, visit the Visual Studio for Mac website and download the installer.

Editor

Project System

We fixed an issue that resulted in an empty properties pad for files when loading AddIn projects.

We increased the speed of the find in files functionality.

We fixed an issue causing erroneous exceptions to be logged when deleting unsaved files from a project.

We fixed an issue resulting in multiple searches and unresponsiveness in the search experience.

We fixed an issue where Visual Studio is unable to find files/classes included into a multi-target SDK style project.

We fixed an issue where the directory path for find in files was not set correctly.

We fixed an issue that prevented users drom opening assemblies in the Assembly Browser.

We fixed an issue that caused files to open in Visual Studio Code instead of in the hex editor when choosing to open in the hex editor.

Source Control

Web and Azure

We fixed an issue where a new F# test project will display errors and warnings.

Xamarin

Known Issues

The following is a list of all existing known issues in Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.8: