Customizing the Development Environment

You can change the appearance and behavior of the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) in many ways. Visual Studio includes several predefined settings combinations that you can apply to the IDE. In addition, you can customize items such as windows, toolbars, shortcut keys, and other UI elements, and save your customizations.

Related Topics

Title	Description
How to: Customize Menus and Toolbars (Visual Studio)	Explains how to add and remove commands from menus and toolbars, and how to add toolbars and arrange them.
How to: Run External Tools from Visual Studio	Explains how to add a command on the Tools menu to start other applications from Visual Studio.
How to: Change What Is Displayed When Visual Studio Starts	Explains how to specify that a particular dialog box, page, or empty environment is displayed when you start the IDE.
Visual Studio Settings	Describes how settings work in the IDE, how to import and export settings, and how to change base settings.
How to: Work with Keyboard Shortcuts	Explains how to determine which keyboard shortcut is assigned to a command, how to create new shortcuts, and how to import or export your custom shortcuts.
Options Dialog Box (Visual Studio)	Describes the Options dialog box.
External Tools in Visual Studio	Describes the various tools and utilities that are included with Visual Studio.
Custom Start Pages	Describes how to install and apply a custom Start Page.
Accessibility Features of Visual Studio	Explains how to create shortcut key combinations, optimize window layouts, change the font and color of text, and customize the IDE in other ways.
Customizing the Editor	Explains how to change the appearance of the editor and the text it displays, and how to create editor shortcuts.
How to: Specify Debugger Settings	Shows how to use the Options and Project Settings dialog boxes to change various settings for the debugger and debugging.
How to: Create and Edit Configurations	Explains how to specify a variety of build configurations for your development effort.
Customizing, Automating, and Extending the Development Environment	Explains how to create add-ins and customize the appearance and behavior of the IDE.