The Visual Studio 2019 team here in Redmond has been living under a perpetually grey, wet winter sky since our last minor release. Thankfully, we are beginning to see the sun making regular appearances.\u00a0 It is our hope this newest release will also brighten your day. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 contains anticipated new features from XAML, .NET, C++ and Debugging.\u00a0 In addition, we have addressed several issues found in our Preview releases. We believe this combination is ready to make your developer journey more productive. If you have any additional ideas to contribute to our product, we invite you to participate in our Developer Community<\/a> forum.<\/p>\n

Install Visual Studio 2019 v16.5<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n

.NET Mobile Development<\/h3>\n
Our first feature to discuss is XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms<\/a>. This feature speeds up your development and makes it easier to build, experiment, and iterate over your mobile app’s user interface. How? You do not need to rebuild your app each time you tweak your UI as changes instantly show while the app is running! Because this updates as you make changes, if you have interacted with the application, the state of the application is not lost as you make the changes.\u00a0 Consequently, you do not have to recreate the repo as you previously did. That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
We heard lots of feedback on a specific need shared via Developer Community Suggestions<\/a>.\u00a0 Due to the fact, you wanted to see changes made to your XAML reload instantaneously on multiple targets such as an iOS simulator and Android emulator, so we have added that capability.<\/p>\n

\u00a0.NET Productivity<\/h3>\n
To help with .NET Productivity several features ship in this Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 release.<\/p>\n
First of all, you can convert if<\/em> statements to switch<\/em> statements or switch expressions. To do this, place your cursor on the if keyword. Press Ctrl<\/strong>+.<\/strong> to trigger the Quick Actions and Refactorings<\/strong> menu. Finally, select Convert to ‘switch’ statement<\/strong> or Convert to ‘switch’ expression<\/strong>.<\/p>\n