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What happened to Visual Studio for Mac?

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Visual Studio for Mac has been retired as of August 31, 2024 in accordance with Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy. Visual Studio for Mac is no longer supported. There will be no further servicing updates to address security issues or updated platforms from Apple. For the most secure, up-to-date experience, we recommend either Visual Studio (Windows) or moving to Visual Studio Code on the Mac.

While we have retired Visual Studio for Mac, we remain committed to our developers on Mac and .NET MAUI with alternatives like the C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code and other extensions you can use to take advantage of our ongoing investments in .NET development.

Support timeline

The following notes outline the timeline for support.

Key dates What happens when
On or before
Aug 31, 2024		 Users can still:
  • Create and maintain Mono, .NET 6, and .NET 7 applications. You can also continue to develop, maintain, and publish your apps to app stores.
  • Access Microsoft Customer Service and Support for Visual Studio for Mac. If you have any support agreements, you can continue to have access to technical support during this period.
  • Install product updates we release so you can reliably maintain and publish your mobile applications using the latest Xcode, iOS, and Android versions. Microsoft also releases security updates for Visual Studio for Mac.
Microsoft doesn't plan to add support for .NET 8 or C#12 to Visual Studio for Mac. We won't extend to any other workloads before retirement either.
After Aug 31, 2024 Visual Studio for Mac will no longer be supported or maintained after August 31, 2024. Visual Studio for Mac will still be available as a legacy installation only via my.visualstudio.com for users with Visual Studio subscriptions.

Note

You must be online to install Visual Studio for Mac. Offline installation isn't available for Visual Studio for Mac.

Alternative options for developing on the Mac

Visual Studio Code is a great place for cloud-native .NET development on the Mac with things like Azure Functions, and more. As of 2023, premier support is available in Visual Studio Code for .NET cloud, .NET MAUI, and Mobile C# development through the C# Dev Kit. Additionally, the C# Dev Kit for .NET MAUI offers support for designing, editing, and debugging Unity scripts as well. These extensions operate natively across all supported platforms, including macOS, and the experience using them are continuously improved as they move from preview to General Availability and beyond. We're continuing to invest in making these extensions a great experience for C#, .NET MAUI and Unity development on Visual Studio Code. We encourage you to submit suggestions and report issues for these extensions in the Visual Studio Code GitHub project repository.

Visual Studio continues to be the premier tool of choice for .NET/C# development. If you prefer to use a full-fledged IDE, you can use the same license for Visual Studio for Mac on Visual Studio on Windows in a VM either on a Mac or in the cloud. You can use VM hosts like Parallels to set up Windows and work in Visual Studio (Windows). A cloud-hosted VM from Microsoft Dev Box provides access to the full power of Visual Studio through your Web or native RDP client from a Mac without the overhead of running a virtual machine on your local machine.

Get support

Visual Studio for Mac is licensed under Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft Customer Service and Support remains available through Visual Studio for Mac’s end-of-life date. Security updates to ensure you can continue to build and publish your existing applications with Visual Studio for Mac will also continue through the retirement date.

You can no longer submit Developer Community tickets to report bugs or create suggestions for new features or extended workload support for Visual Studio for Mac.

Next steps

Try the C# Dev Kit for premier support in Visual Studio Code for .NET cloud, .NET MAUI, and Mobile C# development.

Install Visual Studio on Windows or in a Windows VS or Dev Box to continue working in a full IDE.

To uninstall Visual Studio for Mac, reference the Uninstall Visual Studio for Mac article.