Visual Studio 2019 contains many new and exciting features and IDE productivity enhancements to
support Windows app development, cross-platform mobile development, Azure development, web and cloud development,
and more. To try out Visual Studio 2019, see Visual Studio 2019 Downloads.
For more information about everything that's new in this release, see the
Visual Studio 2019 release notes and
What's New in Visual Studio 2019.
You can install and use Visual Studio 2019 alongside
previous versions of Visual Studio, including Visual Studio 2017, Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2013, and Visual Studio 2012.
When following the supported upgrade paths, your Visual Studio source, solutions, and project files will continue
to work; however, you should expect to make some changes to sources. While we cannot guarantee binary compatibility
between releases, we will do our best to document significant changes to assist you with updates.
Visual Studio provides cutting-edge tools and technologies to create apps that take advantage of the
latest platform capabilities, whether Windows, Android, iOS, or Linux. Visual Studio 2019 also targets
earlier platforms so you can create new apps or modernize existing apps that execute on earlier versions
of Windows while leveraging the enhanced development tools, quality enablement, and team collaboration
capabilities in Visual Studio 2019. For more information, see Managing references in a
project and Visual Studio Multi-Targeting
Overview.
Universal Windows app development for all target platforms is available when Visual Studio is installed on Windows 10.
Universal Windows apps can be built from the command line when using Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016. UWP development—including
designing, editing, and local debugging—is not available on Windows Server. You may deploy these apps to Windows server and debug them remotely.
Unity, and Xamarin can also be used for cross-platform development of Universal Windows Apps on Windows 10.
Visual Studio 2019 Support for .NET Development
Visual Studio 2019 supports development of apps that use any of the .NET implementations. Among the workloads and project types, you can find support for
.NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, .NET Native for Universal Windows Platform (UWP), C#, F#, and Visual Basic. Visual Studio 2019 supports the following .NET implementations:
For more information on each of these implementations, and on the common API specification .NET Standard, see .NET architectural components.
Visual Studio 2019 Support for Android Development
Visual Studio 2019 enables you to build native Android apps using Xamarin and C# or using C++. The Visual Studio Tools for Unity and
the Unreal Engine enable Android game development. You can also use Visual Studio for Mac
to build Android apps using a Mac.
You can use Visual Studio setup to easily obtain the Android SDK and Android API levels 19, 21, 22, and 23.
You can download additional API levels separately using the Android SDK Manager.
You can also use Visual Studio Setup to obtain the Android Native Development Kit (R10E), Java SE Development Kit, and Apache Ant.
Visual Studio 2019 enables you to build and debug apps for iOS by using C++, Unity, or Xamarin
and a Mac configured for iOS development when using remotebuild, vcremote, the Visual Studio Tools for Unity,
or the Xamarin Mac Agent. Xamarin supports iOS 7 and higher, and requires OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" or higher.
You can also use Visual Studio for Mac to build iOS apps using a Mac.
Visual Studio 2019 enables you to build and debug apps for Linux using C++, Python, and Node.js.
Creating C++ apps for Linux requires the
Visual C++ for Linux Development extension. Creating apps with Python or
Node,js, requires that you enable remote debugging on the target Linux machine. You can also create, build
and remote debug .NET Core and ASP.NET Core applications for Linux using modern languages such as C#, VB and F#.
Visual Studio 2019 enables you to build console applications and ASP.NET applications that target macOS.
However, debugging is not supported. For additional macOS development tools choices, try Visual Studio
Code or Visual Studio for Mac. Visual Studio Code provides a streamlined,
extensible developer tool experience for macOS. Visual Studio for Mac
provides a feature-rich IDE that enables you to build native macOS apps, including ASP.NET, using C#.
Team Explorer, Azure DevOps Server, and Team Foundation Server
Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2019 will connect to Azure DevOps Server 2019, Team Foundation Server 2017,
Team Foundation Server 2015, Team Foundation Server 2013, Team Foundation Server 2012, and Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1.
Silverlight
Silverlight projects are not supported in this version of Visual Studio. To maintain Silverlight applications,
continue to use Visual Studio 2015.
Windows Store and Windows Phone apps
Projects for Windows Store 8.1 and 8.0, Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Phone are not supported in this release. To
maintain these apps, continue to use Visual Studio 2015. To maintain Windows 10 Mobile projects, use Visual Studio 2017.
To maintain Windows Phone 7.x projects, use Visual Studio 2012.