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As a .NET developer, I’ve spent most of my time coding on Windows machines. It’s only logical: Visual Studio is the richest development experience for building C# and VB.NET applications, and it only runs on Windows…right?
When I joined Stormpath to work on our open-source .NET authentication library, I was handed a MacBook Pro and given an interesting challenge: can a Mac be an awesome .NET development platform?
Make your own augmented reality app with a professional AR tool. Entiti tool set enables developers & designers to create and integrate outstanding mobile AR experiences. Consider Visual Studio Code (Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. It is free and installs very quickly. You should also. In Visual Studio for Mac preferences, under Key Bindings section, you can choose the Scheme of key bindings. You can select the scheme from this list. This post will be about the first one: “Visual Studio”. I have been trying to use Visual Studio Community 2017 on my Mac to program in C++ recently. It appeared to download correctly and I received no errors, however, it appears to be missing support for C++.
To my surprise, the answer is yes! I’ll share how I turned a MacBook Pro into the ultimate Visual Studio development machine.
How to Run Visual Studio on a Mac
Visual Studio doesn’t run natively on OS X, so my first step was to get Windows running on my MacBook Pro. (If you want an editor that does run natively, Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio Code might fit the bill).
There are multiple options for running Windows on a Mac. Every Mac comes with Apple’s Boot Camp software, which helps you install Windows into a separate partition. To switch between OSes, you need to restart.
Parallels is a different animal: it runs Windows (or another guest OS) inside a virtual machine. This is convenient because you don’t have to restart your computer to switch over to Windows. Instead, Windows runs in an OS X application window.
I found that a combination of both worked best for me. I installed Windows into a Boot Camp partition first, and then turned that partition into an active Parallels virtual machine. This way, I have the option of using Windows in the virtual machine, or restarting to run Windows natively at full speed.
I was initially skeptical of the performance of a heavy application like Visual Studio running in a virtual machine. The option to restart to Windows via Boot Camp gave me a fallback in case Visual Studio was sluggish.
There are some minor disadvantages to this method: you can’t pause the virtual machine or save it to a snapshot. A non-Boot Camp virtual machine doesn’t have these limitations. This guide will work regardless of what type of virtual machine you create.
After three months of serious use, and some tweaks, I’ve been very impressed with Parallels’ performance. I haven’t needed to boot directly to Windows at all. (For comparison, my host machine is a 15” mid-2015 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB flash drive.)
In the remainder of this guide, I’ll detail the steps I took to optimize both Parallels and Visual Studio to run at peak performance.
Installing Windows With Boot Camp and Parallels
Visual Studio For Mac
This part’s easy. I followed Apple’s Boot Camp guide to install Windows in a separate partition.
Then, I installed Parallels and followed the Parallels Boot Camp guide to create a new virtual machine from the existing Boot Camp partition.
Tweaking Parallels for Performance and Usability
The Parallels team publishes guidelines on how to maximize the performance of your virtual machine. Here’s what I adopted:
Mac for music studio. Virtual machine settings:
- 2 virtual CPUs
- 4096MB system memory
- 256MB graphics memory
Parallels options:
- Optimization: Faster virtual machine, Adaptive hypervisor, Tune Windows for speed all turned on.
- Sharing: Shared cloud, SmartMount, and Access Windows folders from Mac turned off, as I didn’t need these for my workflow.
I experimented with both of Parallels’ presentation modes, Coherence and Full Screen. While it was cool to see my Windows apps side-by-side with OS X in Coherence mode, I found that the UI responsiveness (especially opening and closing windows and dialogs) felt sluggish.
Because of this, I use Full Screen exclusively now. I have Windows full-screen on my external Thunderbolt display, and OS X on my laptop. If I need to use OS X on my large monitor, I can swipe the Magic Mouse to switch desktops.
As of Samplitude Pro X 3 Melodyne Essential comes included, giving users a fine box of pitch and time editing tricks to play with. https://twtree557.weebly.com/studio-7-music-maker-for-mac.html.
Adjusting OS X and Windows Features
I fixed a few annoyances and performance drains right off the bat:
- Function keys. If you’re using the Mac keyboard, you’ll want to change the function key behavior so the F1-F12 keys work correctly in Visual Studio. From System Preferences – Keyboard, make sure Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys is checked. With this turned on, hold Fn to use the Mac functions (brightness, volume, etc.) on F1-F12. With an external non-Mac keyboard, this isn’t an issue.
- Start menu. I’m using Windows 8, and the removal of the Start menu annoyed me. I clung to my old ways and installed Start8 to restore it.
- Disable Windows visual effects. I turned off most of the Windows desktop manager visual effects by going to Control Panel – System and Security – Advanced system settings – Advanced – Performance – Settings – Visual Effects and choosing Adjust for best performance. However, I left Smooth edges of screen fonts checked because it improves text rendering on my monitor.
Installing Visual Studio and Helpful Extensions
Installing Visual Studio is a piece of cake once the virtual machine is set up. I simply downloaded the latest release from MSDN and let the installer run.
If you use an Apple Magic Mouse (as I do), Visual Studio tends to be overly eager to zoom the text size in and out as you swipe your finger over the mouse. The Disable Mouse Wheel Zoom add-on fixes this annoyance.
Improving Visual Studio for Performance
I was impressed with how well Visual Studio performed under emulation. With a large multi-project solution open, though, I saw some slowdowns.
Through trial and error, I found a number of things that could be disabled to improve performance. You may not want to make all of the changes I did, so pick and choose your own list of tweaks:
- Disable hardware-accelerated rendering. Unchecking Automatically adjust visual experience based on client performance, Enable rich client visual experience, and Use hardware graphics acceleration if available via Options – Environment made the UI feel much more responsive on my machine.
- Start up to an empty environment. Starting up Visual Studio for the first time feels a lot snappier if you skip the default news page on startup. Select Empty environment under Options – Environment – Startup – At startup.
- Remove unused extensions. Visual Studio ships with a number of extensions that you may not need. From Tools – Extensions and Updates – Installed, remove any extensions you aren’t actively using (you can always reinstall them later). I got rid of six extensions I didn’t need.
- Disable extra debugging features. I turned off both Enable Diagnostic Tools while debugging and Show elapsed time PerfTip while debugging in Options – Debugging – General. I wasn’t using these debugging features, and debugging felt snappier after I disabled them.
- Turn off the Navigation Bar. I found the code editor Navigation Bar to be unnecessary if the Solution Explorer is open. I disabled it via Options – Text Editor – All Languages – Navigation Bar.
- Disable CodeLens. CodeLens is a cool feature for collaboration, but it’s not part of my current workflow. I got rid of the CPU overhead by turning it off via Options – Text Editor – All
Languages – CodeLens – Enable CodeLens. - Turn off Track Changes. When a file is open in the code editor, Visual Studio will represent recent changes by displaying small regions of green or yellow on the scroll bar. If you can live without this, turn off Track changes via Options – Text Editor – General for a small performance boost.
- Turn off Track Active Item. Squeeze out a little bit more UI performance out by ensuring Track Active Item in Solution Explorer is unchecked under Options – Projects and Solutions – General.
Visual Studio on a Mac: The Best of Both Worlds
With these tweaks, I’ve come to love using Visual Studio on a Mac. The performance is good, and by running Windows in a virtual machine, I get the best of both OS worlds.
Want to see what I’m building with this setup? Check out our open-source .NET SDK on Github.
Do you have any other tricks you’ve used to improve Visual Studio performance? Any must-have add-ons that boost your productivity? Leave me a comment below!
Hi there mhutch, this issue appears to have regressed:
Visual Studio Enterprise 2017 for Mac
Version 7.3 (build 797)
Installation UUID: 39922d5e-a216-400f-9782-375c75340169
Runtime:
Mono 5.4.1.7 (2017-06/e66d9abbb27) (64-bit)
GTK+ 2.24.23 (Raleigh theme)
Version 7.3 (build 797)
Installation UUID: 39922d5e-a216-400f-9782-375c75340169
Runtime:
Mono 5.4.1.7 (2017-06/e66d9abbb27) (64-bit)
GTK+ 2.24.23 (Raleigh theme)
NuGet
Version: 4.3.1.4445
Version: 4.3.1.4445
Visual Studio
.NET Core
Runtime: /usr/local/share/dotnet/dotnet
Runtime Version: 2.0.0
SDK: /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/2.0.0/Sdks
SDK Version: 2.0.0
MSBuild SDKs: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/5.4.1/lib/mono/msbuild/15.0/bin/Sdks
Runtime: /usr/local/share/dotnet/dotnet
Runtime Version: 2.0.0
SDK: /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/2.0.0/Sdks
SDK Version: 2.0.0
MSBuild SDKs: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/5.4.1/lib/mono/msbuild/15.0/bin/Sdks
Xamarin.Profiler
Version: 1.6.0
Location: /Applications/Xamarin Profiler.app/Contents/MacOS/Xamarin Profiler
Version: 1.6.0
Location: /Applications/Xamarin Profiler.app/Contents/MacOS/Xamarin Profiler
Apple Developer Tools
Xcode 9.2 (13772)
Build 9C40b
Xcode 9.2 (13772)
Build 9C40b
ASP.NET 5 and Visual Studio Code were among the most interesting technologies mentioned. So, I decided to test using and installing these technologies on a Mac OS X system, running Yosemite. On Mac and Linux an ASP.NET 5 application can be run on Mono or it can be run on.NET Core. On Windows you can run an ASP.NET 5 application with the.NET Framework or.NET Core. There is debugging support under Windows for.NET Core if you use Visual Studio. Visual Studio Code for MAC (Yes it true you have a Visual Studio version for your MAC Now) YeoMan for MAC (This is a web scaffolding tool that runs in a shell. You need this to create the base ASP.NET 5 project template). ASP.NET MVC 5 on Mac OS X. Ask Question. The VM option seems like the only route until Core is more mature. And basically this means having to run a Windows server to host the ASP.NET MVC 5 web app I'll be developing. Visual Studio 2017 for mac missing ado.net and Microsoft.Entity.Data.Model. Run asp net 5 on visual studio for mac. Getting started with ASP.NET 5 and Visual Studio Code on a Mac During Build 2015 Microsoft announced a bunch of new tools aimed at helping developers build cross platform applications. Amongst the announcements, they let us know that ASP.NET was now available and ready to run on Mac.
Xamarin.iOS
Version: 11.4.0.214 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Hash: c4240f3f
Branch: d15-5
Build date: 2017-11-08 17:28:18-0500
Version: 11.4.0.214 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Hash: c4240f3f
Branch: d15-5
Build date: 2017-11-08 17:28:18-0500
Xamarin.Android
Version: 8.1.0.24 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Android SDK: /Users/alangley/Library/Developer/Xamarin/android-sdk-macosx
Supported Android versions:
4.0.3 (API level 15)
4.4 (API level 19)
6.0 (API level 23)
7.1 (API level 25)
8.0 (API level 26)
Version: 8.1.0.24 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Android SDK: /Users/alangley/Library/Developer/Xamarin/android-sdk-macosx
Supported Android versions:
4.0.3 (API level 15)
4.4 (API level 19)
6.0 (API level 23)
7.1 (API level 25)
8.0 (API level 26)
SDK Tools Version: 25.2.5
SDK Platform Tools Version: 26.0.1
SDK Build Tools Version: 25.0.3
SDK Platform Tools Version: 26.0.1
SDK Build Tools Version: 25.0.3
Java SDK: /usr
java version '1.8.0_131'
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_131-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.131-b11, mixed mode)
java version '1.8.0_131'
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_131-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.131-b11, mixed mode)
Android Designer EPL code available here:
https://github.com/xamarin/AndroidDesigner.EPL
https://github.com/xamarin/AndroidDesigner.EPL
Xamarin.Mac
Version: 4.0.0.214 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Version: 4.0.0.214 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Visual Studio For Mac Free
Xamarin Inspector
Version: 1.3.2
Hash: 461f09a
Branch: 1.3-release
Build date: Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:26:57 GMT
Client compatibility: 1
Version: 1.3.2
Hash: 461f09a
Branch: 1.3-release
Build date: Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:26:57 GMT
Client compatibility: 1
X Code
Build Information
Release ID: 703000797
Git revision: ff055b3ecaaeb4229434d0ca871c7d67c62f6388
Build date: 2017-11-30 14:34:51-05
Xamarin addins: 351fc12d4f2367490f8fc2a66b14690d825bb7f1
Build lane: monodevelop-lion-d15-5
Release ID: 703000797
Git revision: ff055b3ecaaeb4229434d0ca871c7d67c62f6388
Build date: 2017-11-30 14:34:51-05
Xamarin addins: 351fc12d4f2367490f8fc2a66b14690d825bb7f1
Build lane: monodevelop-lion-d15-5
Operating System
Mac OS X 10.13.1
Darwin 17.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 17.2.0
Fri Sep 29 18:27:05 PDT 2017
root:xnu-4570.20.62~3/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Mac OS X 10.13.1
Darwin 17.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 17.2.0
Fri Sep 29 18:27:05 PDT 2017
root:xnu-4570.20.62~3/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Enabled user installed addins
AddinMaker 1.4.1
Internet of Things (IoT) development (Preview) 7.1
AddinMaker 1.4.1
Internet of Things (IoT) development (Preview) 7.1