Features
General Features¶
Enable Time Savers¶
The Enable Time Savers
setting, found in Tools | Options | Time Savers | General
,
allows you to temporarily disable all Time Savers features with one simple setting.
This may come in handy if you ever need to suspend Time Savers for whatever reason.
Solution Features¶
Close Solution¶
The Close Solution
feature adds a context menu button, to provide an easy way to close the current solution
without having to use File | Close Solution
.
This can be especially handy if you're already using the mouse in Solution Explorer.
Note
If you're already using the keyboard, you can always use Visual Studio's built-in ALT-F, L
to close it that way too.
Edit Solution¶
The Edit Solution
feature provides a context menu button, to provide a simple way to open the current solution's
.sln
file, to view or modify its contents.
The file is opened in a Visual Studio xml editor tab.
Re-open Start Page¶
When enabled, the Re-open Start Page
feature automatically re-opens the start page whenever the current
solution is closed.
This comes in handy if you use the pin multiple projects to the start page as your preferred method of
opening projects.
Project Features¶
Edit Project¶
The Edit Project
feature provides a context menu button, to provide a simple way to open a project's .csproj
file, to view or modify its contents.
The file is opened in a Visual Studio xml editor tab.
Build Features¶
Rebuild Solution¶
The Rebuild Solution
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide a convenient one-click way to rebuild
the whole solution.
Rebuild Project¶
The Rebuild Project
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide a convenient one-click way to rebuild
just the current project.
Note
The current project is a selected project in Solution Explorer, the project that contains a selected file/folder in Solution Explorer, or the project to which the active code document belongs.
Cancel Build¶
The Cancel Build
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide a convenient one-click way to cancel
a running build/rebuild.
Developer Features¶
Activity Log¶
The Activity Log
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide a convenient way to open Visual Studio's
activity log.
This is particularly useful if an extension is misbehaving, or if you get a message from Visual Studio
to look at the file for more details.
Note
The activity log file's path is %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\version\ActivityLog.xml
, where:
%APPDATA%
represents the value in theAPPDATA
environment variableversion
represents the current Visual Studio version (ie 15.0 etc)
Diagnostic Log¶
The Diagnostic Log
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide an easy way to open the most recent MSBuild
diagnostic log file.
Note
The diagnostic log file's path is: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\MSBuild_guid.failure.txt
, where:
%LOCALAPPDATA%
represents the value in theLOCALAPPDATA
environment variableguid
represents a random guid value
Path Variables¶
The Path Variables
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide a convenient way to display the current set of
Windows paths variable values without the need to open a commpand prompt.
Visual Studio Features¶
Extensions and Updates¶
The Extensions and Updates
feature adds a toolbar button, to provide a convenient way one-click way to
open the Extensions and Updates
dialog.
Restart Features¶
From time to time you may have seen a dialog box offering to restart Visual Studio. Yet there's never been a way to trigger this yourself. The two features explained below, allow you to unlock Visual Studio's built-in ability to restart itself anytime that you want, without manually closing and re-opening the application.
Note
Visual Studio will attempt to re-open the project that was open at the time of triggering the restart,
whereas manually closing and re-opening it may not depending on your
Tools | Options | Environment | Startup
setting.
Restart Visual Studio¶
The Restart Visual Studio
feature adds a toolbar button, that provides a one-click way to restart
Visual Studio.
Note
If Visual Studio was opened as administrator, using this 2 restart Visual Studio, it will still be opened as administrator.
The only way to get a normal session again is to close/re-open Visual Studio manually.
Restart Visual Studio as Administrator¶
The Restart Visual Studio as Administrator
feature adds a toolbar button, that provides a two-click way to
restart Visual Studio as administrator (aka an elevated session).
Options Features¶
Time Savers Options¶
The Time Savers Options
feature adds a toolbar button, that provides a simple one-click way to
open the Tools | Options
dialog with the Time Savers
node expanded, and the General
option selected.
Keyboard Options¶
The Keyboard Options
feature adds a toolbar button, that provides a two-click way to
open the Tools | Options
dialog with the Environment
node expanded, and the Keyboard
option selected.
This can save a lot of time when you add/test a number of keyboard shortcuts, or need to look up a keyboard. shortcut