Visual Studio can be quite slow to open and work with. The menus and auto-hide windows can get sluggish and commands take a while to start. What are the list of things one can do to make the UI of Visual Studio load faster and operate faster? What settings can one change to make it feel lean and minimal?
PS: I know Visual Studio Express is way leaner and faster. However, I rely on some Visual Studio addons, and addons are not supported in Express.
PS2: I have already closed all unnecessary windows. All diagnostic windows are on auto-hide. And all the tool bars are closed. I work almost completely using keyboard shortcuts.
Here are some tips, actually collected from following blog posts
###VS2008
Improve Visual Studio's Source View Performance
Tips to improve performance of visual studio IDE
Visual Studio 2008 Tweaks
###VS2010
Visual Studio 2010 Performance Part 1: Startup
Visual Studio 2010 Performance Part 2: Text Editor
Visual Studio 2010 Performance Part 3: A Technical Update
###Tips
Turn off background HTML validation.
Go to Tools / Options and select Text
Editor / HTML / Validation in the
tree view on the left side. Uncheck the Show Errors
check box.
Turn off AutoRecover. Go to Tools /
Options and select Environment /
AutoRecover in the tree view.
Uncheck the Save AutoRecover check box.
Close your property grid (View /
Properties Window)
web.config should not have <compilation batch=”false” />
Turn off AutoToolboxPopulate (Tools
-> Options -> Windows Forms Designer set AutoToolboxPopulate False)
Turn off Track Active item (Tools ->
Options -> Projects and Solutions
uncheck Track Active Item in Solution
Explorer)
Disable Navigation Bar(Tools ->
Options -> Text Editor -> C#, uncheck
Navigation bar)
Move file in App_Code into a class
library project
Disable validation Options for HTML
Editing (Tools -> Options ->
Validation -> Clear show error
checkbox)
I know that VS 2008 slowed down from VS 2005. I feel this pain every once in a while when im doing a quick Find or Find-Replace, or Find-In-Solution...etc. The UI sometimes isn't as fast as your hands are (when you're using keyboard shortcuts).
I found that just slowing down sometimes is the way to do it (it sucks, but then again, so does many things about Windows).
If it's load times youre concerned about; disable the startup stuff (from the Options menu). Here you can choose to load a blank screen upon VS load AND not to subscribe to any news feeds. (this helps alot depending on your internet connection).
you can also, via Options, adjust the visual animations that occur, as well as just disabling them altogether.
If there's anything else im missing, which im sure there is, i'd really like to know as well!
One thing that can potentially speed up visual studio is to disable document navigation.
Go to Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> and uncheck 'Navigation Bar'.
This is definitately an option in 2008, pretty sure its in 2005 too.
Another option to try:
Go to Tools -> Options -> Text Editor and Uncheck 'Track Changes'.
Without knowing the information I posted in the comments I will say the typical stuff. Turn off all addons, if you are using vista or 7 switch to basic vs aero, check all running processes. This is where I would start.
Related
While in debug mode, the solution explorer has a Script Documents section. It is expanded by default. As the debugger runs, new ScriptDocumentxxx poll.txt files are added to this section. As I am navigating the explorer files, the adding of these new line items causes the entire contents of the explorer to shift downward. This is quite annoying if I am trying to find a file or trying to click something. I can collapse the section manually, but I'd rather not have to do this all of the time.
Right click the projects you are interested in working on and click on 'Scope to this'. This will hide everything (Including the scripts folder) except those projects you selected.
I got annoyed enough with this that I turned off JavaScript debugging. If you are willing to go that far, the scripts are gone.
The path for turn of JS debugging is:
Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> General -> Enable JavaScript debugging for ASP.NET (Chrome, Edge and IE) (Visual Studio 2017 and 2019)
Note: This method does not prevent you from stepping though JS in the Chrome inspection tools so you do not lose that ability. You lose both the scripts (of course) and that new Chrome window that pops up when you launch the debugger.
Yes, there is.
IIS Express > Script Debugging > Disabled
Right click then 'Scope to This' to hide everything but the project in the solution you want to view.
Click on the Home/House icon to reverse it.
Yes there is. One way is to create a visual studio add-in or extension which monitors the solution explorer tree and collapses the "script documents" -item if it is expanded.
If you need code samples and/or a fully functional add-in just let me know. You have Visual Studio 2013, ay? Is it the express edition or what?
This is confirmed bug in VS 2019. Just Microsoft is not so fast about fixing it.
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/idea/351537/provide-a-way-to-prevent-the-script-documents-fold.html
I am using Resharper 7.1 only because one function "Clean Code..." with StyleCop settings.
I dont need other things like intellisense or new menus (which actually working extremely slowly).
Is it possible to use some external tool to clean code and disable Resharper in visual studio?
Is it possible to confugure Resharper to disable all his "cool" addons and menus like custom "Rename" and use VisualStudio defaults?
Any other tool that can reformat code with style cop settings without such impact on performance?
You cannot completely turn off all of the ReSharper features, but if you go to ReSharper | Options you can turn off following things:
Environment -> Editor. You can turn off all of the checkboxes. They are responsible for typing assists and can cause typing delays on very slow computers.
Environment -> Intellisense -> General. You can select 'Visual Studio' to turn off advanced intellisense features from ReSharper.
Code Inspection -> Settings. You can turn off 'Enable code analysis'. It is responsible for finding errors in your code and offering quick fixes for them.
Code Editing -> Context Actions and Code Editing -> C# -> Context Actions. You can turn off all of the checkboxes. They are responsible for giving you some of the code editing helpers by Alt-Enter.
Tools -> Unit testing. You can turn off "Enable unit testing" checkbox if you don't use ReSharper unit test runner.
Maybe you should also delete all of the Todo items patterns from Tools -> To-do items.
But the best thing you can do is to ask your boss to buy you a good development workstation with enough memory and SDD - that would be useful even without ReSharper, because your time is many times more expensive. And learn to use advanced ReSharper features. They are really worth it.
In Visual Studio 2010, the general format of Intellisense/Tooltips is radically altered after installing the Productivity Power Tools. In my opinion, the change severely harms productivity. The below images show the before and after:
With Productivity Power Tools Uninstalled/Disabled:
With Productivity Power Tools Installed/Enabled:
What is the option that I need to disable within Productivity Power Tools to turn this off? I like some of the tools but definitely dislike this particular one. I've tried toggling all of the obvious ones but can't seem to find the correct one.
Note: this question is asking about a similar issue but the accepted answer seems totally irrelevant.
The option you are looking for is called Solution Navigator.
You can get to this option by clicking the "Tools" menu in Visual Studio and selecting "Options...". Scroll down the left pane until you see "Productivity Power Tools". Select it. You will see a bunch of On/Off switches. Scroll down the right pane until you see "Solution Navigator". Turn it off and restart Visual Studio. It took me forever to identify the culprit and I hope this answer will save others some precious time.
Solution Navigator seems like it wouldn't be the culprit but the documentation states:
Solution Navigator also provides interactive tooltips in C# and VB
code (replacing the default “quick info” tooltips) that give you the
same kind of data, but right at your fingertips.
It's a shame that you can't disable just the tooltips, it's all or nothing. The solution navigator itself is actually kind of nifty.
If you go into the settings for the Productivity Power Tools (Tools > Options > Productivity Power Tools) there is a node called Solution Navigator. In that node there is an "Enable interactive tooltips" option. Make sure that is unchecked to disable the Power Tools tool tips and get the normal Visual Studio tool tips back.
colithium's answer is what led me to find this setting. I'm using version 10.0.20626.18, I'm not sure if that is the case in earlier versions.
When i right click in the text editor in Visual studio 2008 IDE, the Pop Up menu comes at a slower pace. Is there any setting in visual studio that can control this behavior?
After a windows crash my IntelliSense context menu (when clicked over a member/class/declaration) became very slow (~10s to open it). Solution was to close my VS2012, and delete solution cache files (solutionname.suo).
Keep in mind that .suo files are hidden.
After reloading the solution all came back to normal!
You may make VS GUI faster by disabling animation.
Uncheck "Animate environment tools" checkbox in tools - options - environment - general.
This may help...
The problem is possibly a timeout trying to connect to a Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. To disable this in VS 2012:
Tools > Options > Source Control > Plug-in Selection > Current Source control plugin-in > None
This worked for me and I read about it in a comment on this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3467989/1007353 .
I've been using Visual Studio for a long time and the constant shuffling of the code tabs at the top drives me bonkers. I was wondering if there were any add-ins that might change this or other UI behavior.
Things that might be cool:
Sticky Tabs that won't go away.
Multi-code file collapsible tabs (maybe each tab being a project?).
Having the solution tree go to the file you are currently looking at automatically. Thanks Omlette!
Your idea here.
I've done a bit of googling and haven't been able to find anything useful.
The "Having the solution tree go to the file you are currently looking at automatically" feature already exists in VS2008, but isn't enabled by default. Go to tools -> options -> projects and solutions -> general and check the "Track Active Item in Solution Explorer" box.
Rick,
Tabs Studio add-in for Visual Studio is a replacement for built-in tabs. Multiple rows of tabs make them always visible. Tabs can be grouped, it is probably close to what you call "multi-code file tabs".
See Tabs Studio home page for more information.