Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2022 17.13, with long-awaited fixes including the ability to set the default text file encoding to UTF-8 without a BOM (byte order mark), first requested in 2017.

Text file encoding is a source of friction for developer teams working across Windows, Mac and Linux, with one of the annoyances being that Visual Studio, when saving a file as UTF-8, added a BOM header, causing problems in applications or environments where this was unexpected. There are many workarounds, but it was a frequent annoyance.

“Every time I create a new empty file I accidently save it with BOM. And pretty often (when used outside VS) this causes problems. JSON files in bad format, PHP files that cannot send header information after any text output…” complained one developer, commenting on an issue which was raised in 2017, queued for “prioritization” in 2019, and fixed in this new release more than five years later. 

Visual Studio now lets developers set the default encoding for saving files, with one of the options being UTF-8 without signature.

Another improvement is the ability to use multiple GitHub accounts without constant signing out and signing in. This issue was raised in late 2022, perhaps qualifying as a speedy fix. Developers can now add multiple GitHub accounts via “add another account” and switch between them.

Work has proceeded more quickly with GitHub Copilot, with the arrival of a free tier encouraging Microsoft to deepen its integration. Visual Studio is a large application, and Copilot now promises to help developers discover features via “AI-enhanced feature search” which can parse the intent and not just the name of what is being sought. An example is that a search for “prettify file” should find the menu option “format document.” Other new Copilot features are edits across multiple files via chat, and code referencing for Copilot completions that are sourced from public code repositories.

Markdown files are now promoted to an option in the Visual Studio Add New Item dialog.

There is more on these and other new features in the release notes.

Microsoft has also updated the C# DevKit extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code), used by .NET developers on non-Windows platforms. Key changes include workspaces without solution files, which as developers observed on Reddit a year ago are not needed outside Visual Studio. 

Another DevKit update, now in preview, is the ability to add .NET Aspire orchestration to a project via the VS Code command palette. More information on the new features are in the official post.