Customize the Visual Studio IDE

You can customize Visual Studio IDE settings in various ways to best support your own development style and requirements. Many of your settings roam with you across Visual Studio instances. See Synchronized settings. This article briefly describes different personalizations and where you can find more information.

Export and import Visual Studio environment settings

Visual Studio lets you export and import your personal environment settings (such as themes, keyboard shortcuts, window layouts, templates, and other preferences) into a new installation. This makes it easy to recreate your previous customized environment when setting up a new Visual Studio instance. You can use the wizard, by selecting Tools > Import and Export Settings, to import or export specific categories of setting, or to reset the environment to one of the default collections of settings.

Export settings

Tip

Each time you close Visual Studio, a backup of your settings is saved automatically as a .vssettings file.
You can find this file at: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>\Settings\
Each version has its own folder. To reuse your settings, copy the file from the version you want and then follow the steps in the Import settings section.

You can manually export your settings from inside Visual Studio using the wizard:

Open the Visual Studio instance that contains the settings you want to export.
Select Tools > Import and Export Settings.
In the wizard, select Export selected environment settings, then choose Next.
Select which settings you want to export, then choose Next.
Enter a filename and location for your .vssettings file, then select Finish.

Import settings

To manually import your settings:

Open the Visual Studio instance you want to import your settings into.
Select Tools > Import and Export Settings.
In the wizard, select Import selected environment settings, then choose Next.
Select No, just import new settings, overwriting my current settings, then choose Next.
Select Browse, then select your saved .vssettings file, then choose Next.
Select which settings you want to import, then select Finish.

Reset all settings

You can also use the wizard to reset the environment to one of the default collections of settings.

From the menu bar, select Tools > Import and Export Settings.
In the Import and Export Settings Wizard, select Reset all settings, and then select Next.
On the Save Current Settings page, select either Yes, save my current settings or No, just reset settings, overwriting my current settings, and then select Next.
On the Choose a Default Collection of Settings page, select a collection, and then select Finish.
On the Reset Complete page, select Close.

General environment options

Many personalization options are exposed through the Environment Options UI. There are two ways to access these options:

Tip

When the Environment options open, you can select F1 for help on the various settings on that page.

Environment color themes

Customize menus and toolbars

To add or remove menu or toolbar items, see Customize menus and toolbars.

You can change the main menu casing between Title Case ("File") and All Caps ("FILE").

Window layouts

You can define and save multiple window layouts and switch between them. For example, you can define one layout for coding and one for debugging. To arrange window positions and behavior and save custom layouts, see Customize window layouts and personalize tabs.

External tools

You can customize the Tools menu to launch external tools. For more information, see Manage external tools.

Last updated on 2025-11-14

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