Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.5 is now available

Dominic

March 23rd, 2020

Are you ready for the latest version of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac? If so, version 8.5 is available for you to download today! With this release, we’ve continued to polish the existing experience, paying close attention to problem areas mentioned by our users. You’ll also find authentication templates available for ASP.NET Core projects and support for the latest Azure Functions version 3.0.

Use authentication in your ASP.NET Core apps

Many of our ASP.NET Core developers have requested that we bring the ability to easily create ASP.NET Core apps with authentication to Visual Studio for Mac. Now, when you create a new ASP.NET Core project that supports No Authentication or Individual Authentication using an in-app store, you’ll encounter an additional screen in the new project creation wizard. Please give this new feature a try and let us know any feedback you have.

You spoke, we listened

We’ve been working hard to address issues our users encounter in Visual Studio for Mac in their average day. As part of our efforts in improving the overall experience, we’ve released a handful of new changes that address some of the concerns we’ve heard. I’m personally excited about fixes in the Unit Test explorer that resulted in a closer resemblance to Windows with regards to unit test nesting and improvements in the debugger that include the ability to edit function breakpoints and better stepping performance. We’ve also fixed an issue that showed duplicate entries for launchSettings.json and appsettings.json in the solution explorer.

In addition to updating the NuGet distribution in Visual Studio for Mac with version 5.4, the latest version also found in Visual Studio, we’ve also fixed issues where NuGet packages would fail to update and made the NuGet Package Manager much more accessible with more logical focus order and improved VoiceOver and keyboard navigation.

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.5 also brings official support for Azure Functions 3.0, allowing you to build and deploy functions with the 3.0 runtime. You’ll find templates to help you get started with serverless computing under the Cloud > General section in the create new project dialog. You can follow the tutorial here to get started with your first Azure Function in Visual Studio for Mac.

We hope you enjoy Visual Studio 2019 for Mac 8.5 as much as we enjoyed working on it. To update to this version, you can download the installer from the Visual Studio for Mac website or use the in-product updater to update an existing installation.

If you have any feedback on this, or any version of Visual Studio for Mac, please leave it in the comments below this post or reach out to us on Twitter at @VisualStudioMac. If you run into any issues while using Visual Studio for Mac, you can use Report a Problem to notify the team. In addition to reports on issues in the product, we’d also appreciate hearing from you on what’s important to you via feature suggestions on the Visual Studio Developer Community website.