Best Visual Studio Plugins, Themes, and Extensions

Visual Studio is Microsoft's popular integrated development environment (IDE). Developers can use Visual Studio to create applications for different platforms.

Visual Studio supports many features and offers a large number of extensions to enhance productivity. In this article, you can find the information you are looking for about Visual Studio extensions.

 

What is Visual Studio?

Visual Studio is a powerful IDE. With over 11 million users worldwide, Visual Studio is a code editor that developers love to use. You can download Visual Studio and start creating applications and APIs.

 

What are Visual Studio Extensions?

One of the reasons to use Microsoft Visual Studio as a fully integrated development environment (IDE) or code editor is that it has a large number of downloadable extensions to add features and functionalities to the workspace.

Visual Studio extensions are add-ons that enhance and customize the Visual Studio experience. The purpose of these extensions is to increase productivity and improve workflow.

The complexity level of Visual Studio extensions varies. Additionally, Visual Studio offers a large number of extensions. Visual Studio Marketplace provides both free and paid versions of these extensions for download. Visual Studio extensions typically focus on improving and facilitating software development cycles such as debugging, testing, time management, and code maintenance.

 

What are the Advantages of Visual Studio Extensions?

Visual Studio extensions have many advantages. These extensions perform a variety of functions. The main advantages of Visual Studio are:

• Speeds Up Code Writing: Visual Studio extensions accelerate the code writing and development process. They offer features like autocomplete and error correction, showing errors made while writing code.
• Enhances Code Quality: Visual Studio extensions improve code quality. They offer code analysis and code review features, checking the code to detect software bugs.
• Increases Efficiency: Visual Studio extensions increase efficiency in the development process by creating task lists and task boards.
• Offers Customization Options: Provides the ability to adjust according to needs, allowing developers to customize the development process.

 

How to Install Visual Studio Extensions?

There are many extensions available in Visual Studio. You can follow these steps to install Visual Studio extensions:

1. To install via Visual Studio Marketplace, first open the "Extensions" menu in Visual Studio.

2. Select the "Manage Extensions" option.
3. In the new page that opens, click on the "Online" tab.

4. Select the "Visual Studio Marketplace" option on the left side. Enter the name of the extension in the search bar. Select the desired extension and click the "Download" button to download it.

 

Uninstalling or Disabling a Visual Studio Extension

If you want to stop using an extension, you can disable or uninstall it.

1. Click on the Extensions header.
2. Find the installed extensions.

3. Search for the extension you want to remove or disable here. If you click the disable extension option, the extension remains installed in Visual Studio but is not active. If you want to completely remove the extension, click the uninstall option.

 

Are Visual Studio Extensions Free?

Visual Studio has both free and paid extensions. The price varies depending on the selected plan and the number of licenses. Some add-ons are offered with a monthly or annual subscription system, while others are available for a one-time purchase.
 

Best Visual Studio Extensions

1. GitHub Extension for Visual Studio

GitHub Extension for Visual Studio is an extension developed by Microsoft. It is one of the most popular Visual Studio extensions. It allows .Net developers to connect to both GitHub and GitHub Enterprise and manage their projects directly through Visual Studio. This allows developers to easily update changes in GitHub projects through Visual Studio.

Some features of the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio include:

✅ The extension allows developers to easily access their GitHub accounts.

✅ The GitHub Extension for Visual Studio offers many tools such as code completion, debugging, and code editing to facilitate the coding process.

✅ Developers can quickly and easily make changes to GitHub projects through Visual Studio using the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio.

✅ This extension allows teams to share their projects and manage them together.
 

2. Visual Assist

Developed by Whole Tomato Software, Visual Assist is an extension used in the C++ programming language. It assists developers with tasks such as reformatting and code generation. It offers a more efficient code development environment and functionality.

Some features of the Visual Assist extension include:

✅ Visual Assist offers features such as quick code completion, code navigation, refactoring, and debugging to software developers.

✅ Visual Assist helps users make their code cleaner and more readable.

✅ Visual Assist makes the work of those working in the C++ programming language easier with its features.

✅ The code completion feature saves time.

✅ The code review feature allows for the detection and correction of programming errors.

✅ The code navigation feature allows for quick navigation within the code. This feature enables faster code editing.

 

3. ReSharper

ReSharper is a productivity tool that helps automate code by finding code errors and redundancies and enables instant fixes. ReSharper is a highly popular extension for Microsoft Visual Studio developed by JetBrains.

ReSharper aims to speed up developers' workflows and make the code writing process easier and more efficient with its built-in tools. ReSharper supports programming languages such as C#, .NET, JavaScript, CSS, and ASP.NET.

Some features of the ReSharper extension include:

✅ ReSharper has a user-friendly interface.

✅ Helps analyze code quality.

✅ Compatible with different programming languages.

✅ Eliminates static errors.

✅ Facilitates code refactoring.

✅ Helps in faster application development.

✅ Facilitates repetitive tasks by creating code templates, thereby saving time.
 

4. CodeMaid

CodeMaid is a Visual Studio extension that makes code more readable, formats comments, and cleans up whitespace. It supports programming languages such as C#, C++, PHP, CSS, and JavaScript.

Some features of the CodeMaid extension include:

✅ CodeMaid performs code cleaning tasks such as code analysis, code formatting, code conversion, and removing unnecessary code.

✅ Helps eliminate unnecessary whitespace.

✅ Formats comments.

✅ Assists with tasks like alphabetizing import and code sections.

✅ It is a free extension.

 

5. Glyphfriend

Glyphfriend is a Visual Studio extension that allows the use of common emoji, icons, and glyph characters. The Glyphfriend extension makes it much easier for developers to use emojis and icons. It saves time while also making the coding process more fun. The Glyphfriend extension offers many advantages to web developers.

Some features of the Glyphfriend extension include:

✅ Glyphfriend allows you to quickly add emojis and icons to your code.

✅ Glyphfriend is very easy to use.

✅ It enables adding visual elements, making the code visually more appealing.

✅ Glyphfriend supports libraries such as Bootstrap Glyphicons, Entypo, Font Awesome, Foundation, Ionicons, Material Design, and Octicons.

✅ The Glyphfriend extension is free.

 

6. Prettier

Prettier is a Visual Studio extension used to create a consistent code style and make the code more readable. The Prettier extension is ideal for large-scale teams and teams with multiple people.

Prettier automatically formats code, saving developers time. It also provides a standard coding format, allowing the entire team to write code in the same standards.

Using the Prettier extension, which is free, is very easy. It can be used for many programming languages such as JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, Less, SCSS, and JSON.
 

7. File Icons

File Icons is a Visual Studio extension that orders and filters files in a specific layout. This extension allows for quick file searches, enabling fast work without getting lost among files in large projects.

With the File Icons extension, the development process becomes more efficient. Additionally, it offers a visually richer experience, making the development process more enjoyable.
 

8. Live Share

Live Share is an extension that offers real-time code sharing and debugging features. It was developed by Microsoft to enable teams to work collaboratively.

Developers can join sessions through Live Share and write code in their editors without needing to copy anything. Live Share makes code sharing easier, meaning multiple people can work on a project more easily. Additionally, Live Share ensures the security of the workspace, allowing only designated users to access the code.

 

9. Ozcode

Ozcode is a Visual Studio extension that detects errors, shortens debugging time, and increases productivity. Ozcode makes C# debugging simple and efficient.

Some features of the Ozcode extension include:

✅ Accelerates the coding process, enhances code quality, aids in debugging, saves time, and ensures better code tracking.

✅ LINQ debugging is usually difficult and time-consuming. However, using Ozcode makes this process less complicated.

✅ Offers strong visualization with color coding.

✅ Ozcode integrates with the Visual Studio debugger and enhances the functionality of Visual Studio.

✅ The Ozcode extension provides insights that predict the future of code execution.

 

10. Visual Studio IntelliCode

Visual Studio IntelliCode is an AI-powered tool developed by Microsoft that increases developer productivity. IntelliCode uses machine learning for code completion.

It enables the understanding of code and content through machine learning. It is applicable to C#, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript, and XAML code. However, support for new programming languages is also expected.