Visual Studio for Mac will be discontinued, according to Microsoft. Microsoft will continue to provide support for the most recent version of the company’s IDE for Mac until August 2024.
Microsoft stated in the release that it is “redirecting our resources and focus to enhance Visual Studio and VS Code, optimizing them for cross-platform development.” “No new runtime, framework, or language support will be added to Visual Studio for Mac.”
Microsoft has agreed to provide security patches and platform upgrade compatibility for Visual Studio for Mac for the upcoming 12 months as part of the wind-down process.
According to Microsoft, “We will also keep delivering runtime and workload updates so you can keep developing and releasing applications built on the.NET 6,.NET 7, and the Mono frameworks.” We’ve also enabled basic support for .NET 8 in Visual Studio for Mac for developing and debugging applications, despite it not being officially supported.
The Mac edition of Visual Studio 2022 underwent a significant upgrade that included a native user interface, Apple Silicon optimization, and the first-ever complete 64-bit support. VS was first introduced to the Mac by Microsoft in 2016.
When Visual Studio for Mac becomes unusable, Microsoft advises using its IDE in the cloud or a virtual Windows workstation on a Mac. Microsoft instead highlights cross-platform compatible developer technology that is compatible with macOS.
VS Code, a rich text editor for Mac, will continue to exist while the IDE Visual Studio for Mac is being retired. Another option that Visual Studio users might try out is Rider, a rival.NET IDE.
