What are your favorite Visual Studio Plugins / Extensions?

added by David Paquette
3/26/2015 8:51:31 PM

1806 Views

The Visual Studio Gallery (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/) has thousands of extensions for Visual Studio. With everything from a Vim emulator to Farticus, there really is an extension for everything. Here is a list of extensions that I can't live without: * [Resharper](https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper) * [Web Essentials](http://vswebessentials.com/) * [Task Runner Explorer (Grunt/Gulp integration)](https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/8e1b4368-4afb-467a-bc13-9650572db708) * [Side Waffle (Item and Project templates)](http://sidewaffle.com/) What are your favorite extensions?


42 comments

Jeremy Morgan 
3/26/2015 9:08:26 PM
Some recent discoveries: NUnit Test Runner for Visual Studio https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/6ab922d0-21c0-4f06-ab5f-4ecd1fe7175d CodeMaid https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/76293c4d-8c16-4f4a-aee6-21f83a571496 Visual Studio Tools for Git https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/abafc7d6-dcaa-40f4-8a5e-d6724bdb980c

Jeremy Morgan 
3/26/2015 9:09:42 PM
And as a note the Git tools is only for 2012 and below as it's not needed in 2013.

Jeremy Morgan 
3/26/2015 9:10:42 PM
NodeJS tools for Visual Studio https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/

Robert Greyling
3/26/2015 9:44:12 PM
Completely agree with @Dave_Paquette - his top ones are awesome. I've found web essentials lacking for SASS support though and with many of my clients that is the default choice. So I'd highly recommend using Sassy Studio for syntax highlighting and compilation of SCSS to CSS - also does minification on the fly! https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/85fa99a6-e4c6-4a1c-9f00-e6a8129b6f4d

Robert Greyling
3/26/2015 9:48:48 PM
Another one of course for that kind of stuff is [MindScape's Web Workbench](https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/2b96d16a-c986-4501-8f97-8008f9db141a) but it's slowly losing ground I'd say to Web Essentials since they mostly overlap now, but there are still some things that Web Workbench does that Essentials doesn't.

Robert Greyling
3/26/2015 9:54:07 PM
One plugin that I can't say enough good things about is the awesome [NCrunch](http://www.ncrunch.net/) built by @remcomulder - I'd say my speed of coding has at least doubled due to the fast feedback and less context switching because you get to stay in the zone so much more. If you write unit tests or work in TDD, then you need to be using this tool

Claus Sørensen
3/26/2015 10:06:09 PM
+1 for NCrunch. That really pushes me to write my tests before the code, because I get a tiny kick from seeing my code going from red to green as I type!

David Paquette
3/27/2015 12:00:15 AM
I did not know about NCrunch. Looks very interesting...I will have to give that a try

Simon Timms
3/27/2015 12:00:56 PM
In the same space there is Continouse Tests - http://www.continuoustests.com/ which was a Greg Young initiative. I'm not sure that it is really mained anymore but is is open source.

jgauffin
5/26/2015 4:31:40 PM

Thomas Levesque
3/26/2015 10:34:39 PM
The only one I really couldn't live without is ReSharper; my productivity drops dramatically when I have to code without it. I also like VSCommands, which includes a bunch of useful little features (e.g. the VCS branch name in the window title).

Simon Timms
3/27/2015 12:48:03 PM
As a CodeRush user I cannot let any mention of R# go without reply. CodeRush is also and excellent productivity tool.

mhardy4
3/27/2015 1:29:10 AM
Productivity Power Tools https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/dbcb8670-889e-4a54-a226-a48a15e4cace

Thomas Levesque
3/29/2015 5:35:56 PM
I used to have Productivity Power Tools, but now I think it brings nothing useful. Most of its interesting features have been included directly into Visual Studio.

mhardy4
3/30/2015 12:27:20 AM
I use Transform Templates fairly often. It let's you transform all the T4's for a specific project. VS only offers Transform All which does your entire solution.

D Nemec
3/27/2015 3:07:57 AM
Resharper (of course). I also love Editor Guidelines. I set one at 80 characters not as a hard-and-fast rule, but because it gives me a good point to think about breaking to another line. I know everyone has enormous, wide screens these days, but it's nice to be able to scroll through a diff (code reviews, anyone?) without having to scroll horizontally. Indent Guides used to be a big one as well, but that's built into VS2013+ so I no longer need it.

D Nemec
3/27/2015 3:08:47 AM
Oh yeah and I like VSCommands because it lets me lowercase the VS menu :D

SaintGerbil
3/27/2015 6:41:52 AM
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "Visual F# Power Tools" yet very handy.

Robert Greyling
3/27/2015 11:36:52 AM
You just did! :-D

Bob Senoff
3/27/2015 4:12:32 PM
@panesofglass have any other F# suggestions?

Mike Johnson
3/27/2015 10:59:46 AM
Spell Checker. Spell checks markup, string literals and comments in real-time. It has prevented all kinds of gaffs for me through the years. https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/7c8341f1-ebac-40c8-92c2-476db8d523ce

Robert Greyling
3/27/2015 11:01:08 AM
OMG that is awesome! My speling is terible! ;-)

Simon Timms
3/27/2015 11:58:59 AM
I've just started using OzCode which is pretty handy for debugging. http://www.oz-code.com/

Paul Wheeler
3/27/2015 1:56:32 PM
I'm also an OzCode user and it really helps when inspecting long lists of complex objects!

Paul Wheeler
3/27/2015 2:00:22 PM
I think you guys have mentioned the big ones. Some smaller ones I use are: Add New File File Nesting StopOnFirstBuildError Trailing Whitespace Visualizer Viasfora VSColorOutput

Thomas Levesque
3/29/2015 5:40:16 PM
What does File Nesting do? Nest a file under another in Solution Explorer? If so, VSCommands does it too. And if we can also mention the small ones, I'll drop AutoRunCustomTool in there https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ecb123bf-44bb-4ae3-91ee-a08fc1b9770e (shameless plug)

Paul Wheeler
3/29/2015 5:50:36 PM
I need to spend a little more time playing around with VSCommands but here's what the File Nesting extension does: Automatically nest files based on file name and enables developers to nest and unnest any file manually. https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3ebde8fb-26d8-4374-a0eb-1e4e2665070c

mhardy4
3/30/2015 12:51:42 AM
Trailing Whitespace Visualizer : thanks Paul - you've just taken my OCD to whole new level. :)

JudahGabriel
3/29/2015 5:08:39 PM
WebEssentials - great for LESS, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, and more. GhostDoc - great for quickly documenting a method

Ken Cenerelli
3/29/2015 6:32:05 PM
One thing I like about Productivity Power Tools is PresentOn where the IDE is set up for presentations. @thomaslevesque - do you know if these now exist in VS2013?

Senthil Kumar
3/30/2015 9:11:30 AM
ReSharper is one . Web Essentials is another great extension for Visual Studio especially for the web developers.

James Chambers
4/6/2015 1:56:46 AM
+1 for WebEssentials. When dealing with localization, this one is a God-send: ResXManager, which you can get here: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3b64e04c-e8de-4b97-8358-06c73a97cc68?SRC=VSIDE This lets you import/export resource files as XSLT, so if you're working with an external team for translation, this is a must-have.

Robert Greyling
4/6/2015 12:37:20 PM
@CanadianJames ah that's awesome - a couple of the legacy apps I'm working with could definitely use this as we transition - thanks for the pointer!

Jeremy Morgan 
4/8/2015 8:54:00 PM
I have recently discovered a VS plugin that is not free, but so incredibly worth the money: http://www.oz-code.com/ Within minutes of using it I could immediately see the value. I discovered it by attending a local .Net meetup where the creator was speaking and after he showed even more capability I had to have it. 30 day trial and well worth checking out.

Robert Greyling
4/8/2015 8:56:12 PM
@JeremyCMorgan Yeah I noticed @paulwheeler mentioned that same plugin earlier in this thread and I've been meaning to check it out. By all accounts it looks amazing! :)

Jeremy Morgan 
4/8/2015 8:58:05 PM
@RobertTheGrey Oh, I didn't see it listed. Count it as another vote. Shaves a lot of time off the debugging process.

mhardy4
4/10/2015 1:23:54 PM
@RobertTheGrey I started using it last week when I saw it mentioned by @paulwheeler. Definitely worth a look. The "Reveal" feature alone is worth the cost of admission. It's like adding DebuggerDisplay's to anything at runtime! Very cool.

Jeremy Morgan 
4/16/2015 10:17:02 PM
Recently discovered CodeConnect - http://www.codeconnect.io/ Pretty awesome visualization for your code in Visual Studio.

David Paquette
4/17/2015 1:07:13 AM
@JeremyCMorgan that looks really cool. I am definitely going to give this one a try.

Jeremy Morgan 
4/17/2015 6:00:37 AM
@Dave_Paquette I haven't become "have to have it" dependent on it like Resharper/OzCode have been, but it's probably going to end up that way.

jgauffin
5/26/2015 4:33:15 PM
"Find in Solution Explorer". Awesome when you are navigating using "Find Reference" or "Goto implementation". https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d2fc1e94-b85c-4a15-8569-390db1e04f47

Linda Lawton
9/8/2015 12:58:41 PM
Seriously guys no one says "NuGet Package Manager"? I would be totally lost without that. What about AnkhSVN?