It's been a long time coming, but native Arm64 support for Visual Studio is finally here. Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2022 17.4 to the general public, and it can now run natively on Arm64-based devices such as the Surface Pro 9 with 5G or the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (previously known as Project Volterra).

A native Arm version of Visual Studio had been announced at this year's Build, along with the aforementioned Project Volterra and a full native developer toolchain for Arm. Microsoft appears to be finally taking Windows Arm development seriously, and a native version of Visual Studio is a huge part of that, as it makes it easier for developers to build and test apps on Arm-based devices. Without native support, apps run under emulation, which can result in big performance hits.

Microsoft says it focused on a few specific use cases for the initial availability of native Arm support for Visual Studio, but it already covers a few scenarios. Supported workloads include desktop apps using .NET and C++, web development, UWP apps, Visual Studio extensions, games using C++, and Node.js. You can also expect native performance with the Windows SDK and Win App SDK with this release, along with support for most types of desktop apps including Windows Forms, WPF, Win UI 3, and WinUI 2. However, .NET MAUI support is coming later. Microsoft has also added native Arm64 support to .NET Framework 4.8.1 in addition to .NET 6 and .NET 7, the latter of which is also available today.

Aside from native Arm64 support, Visual Studio 2022 17.4 comes with a few other improvements, including the ability to roll back an update if it's causing you issues, support for multiple Git repositories, and the new Teams Toolkit to make it easier to develop apps for Microsoft Teams. It also comes with a wide range of performance improvements.

You can download Visual Studio 2022 17.4 here, and keep in mind there's only one installer. If you have an Arm64 device, it will automatically detect the architecture and install the appropriate version of Visual Studio for you. Microsoft also released the first preview of Visual Studio 17.5 today, with even more improvements to Arm64 support and other enhancements. You can download it here.

Source: Microsoft