No Visual Studio IDE for Linux/macOS

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Confirmed, Finally, Again: No Visual Studio IDE for Linux/macOS

By David Ramel
09/22/2025

"No, VS is Windows only and that isn't going to change," said Microsoft's Mads Kristensen today in a social media post in response to the question that keeps popping up about taking the flagship IDE to other platforms.

The issue has been raised for years, with Microsoft finally closing out a 2018 request for " Visual Studio on Linux " after it had acquired 2,458 votes, topping the charts. Microsoft advises its Visual Studio developers to use Visual Studio Code on Linux and macOS machines. For the latter, a failed Visual Studio for Mac effort was finally put to bed Aug. 31, 2024.

Visual Studio for Mac
"Informed by ongoing user feedback and usage patterns for Visual Studio for Mac, we're focusing our efforts on optimizing Visual Studio, accessible through Microsoft Dev Box on any operating system, and the C# Dev Kit for VS Code, which is accessible on any OS," Microsoft said in 2023.

That IDE was built on MonoDevelop, which was mentioned by the social media user to whom Kristensen was responding: "Maybe not by building on top of MonoDevelop, but a ground up write matching feature-for-feature of the Windows version on macOS & Linux? While the VSCode experience is nice, I prefer the IDE experience."

The troublesome project was hampered by ongoing performance, reliability, and feature-parity issues that Microsoft tried to address with various remediation efforts over the years, but many developers felt the issues persisted. So now we know that even without MonoDevelop, the answer is still no for VS on Mac.

For its part, Microsoft has published:

Visual Studio for Linux
The topic of a native Visual Studio IDE for Linux has a different history than its macOS counterpart, but it has followed a similar trajectory toward a definitive "no" from Microsoft. Unlike Visual Studio for Mac, a separate product that was officially discontinued, a full Visual Studio IDE has never been available for Linux. Microsoft's stance has consistently been to support Linux development through other means, primarily the cross-platform Visual Studio Code (VS Code) and remote development tools.

The company's strategy is to allow developers to build and debug Linux applications from within the Windows-based Visual Studio IDE by connecting to a remote Linux machine. This is a key feature of the "Linux and embedded development with C++" workload in Visual Studio. Microsoft's official documentation highlights this approach. The company's official position, as evidenced by its product strategy and developer documentation, is that VS Code is the "standalone source code editor that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux," while the comprehensive Visual Studio IDE remains the premier tool for Windows.

This stance is reflected in the official Visual Studio Developer Community forum, where that request for "Visual Studio on Linux" was marked as out of scope despite tremendous support .

Discussions on social media and developer forums like Reddit also frequently point to this divide. When developers ask for a Visual Studio IDE on Linux, for example, the common response is to use alternatives such as VS Code, JetBrains Rider, or to leverage the remote development capabilities of Visual Studio. Rider was brought up again in response to the post commented on by Kristensen, who is Microsoft's principal program manager for Visual Studio.

A common point of debate in these discussions is whether VS Code can ever truly replace the full feature set of the Visual Studio IDE, with many developers arguing that an editor, no matter how powerful, is not a substitute for a true IDE with built-in project management, designers, and a fully integrated debugging experience.

On Reddit alone you can find these discussions:

Microsoft's response to those clamoring for Linux was detailed when it closed the Developer Community request:

Thanks for your feedback. We do not currently have plans for a native version of Visual Studio on Linux. There are some alternatives in the Visual Studio family for all your app workloads.

Use Visual Studio on Windows to develop apps for Linux.

Download the C# Dev Kit for VS Code, which includes powerful tools and utilities for writing, debugging, and maintaining C# code on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Try the VS Code extensions for .NET MAUI and Unity.

You can also run Visual Studio on Microsoft Dev Box. This cloud-hosted version provides access to the full power of Visual Studio through your browser or native RDP client, without the overhead of running a VM on your local machine.

You can find more detailed information about our decision-making process here.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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