Project and item templates
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
Project and item templates provide reusable stubs that give users some basic code and structure, that they can customize for their own purposes.
Visual Studio templates
A number of predefined project and item templates are installed with Visual Studio. These templates, such as the ASP.NET Web Application and Class Library templates, are available to choose from when you create a new project. Item templates, such as code files, XML files, HTML pages, and Style Sheets, appear in the Add New Item window.
These templates provide a starting point for users to begin creating projects, or to expand existing projects. Project templates provide the files that are required for a particular project type, include standard assembly references, and set default project properties and compiler options. Item templates can range in complexity from a single empty file that has a certain file extension, to multiple source code files with stub code, designer information files, and embedded resources.
You can use installed templates, author your own custom templates, or download and use templates created by the community. For more information, see How to: Create project templates and How to: Create item templates.
Contents of a template
All project and item templates, whether installed with Visual Studio or created by you, function using the same principles and have similar contents. All templates contain the following items:
- The files to be created when the template is used. These files include source code files, embedded resources, project files, and so on.
- A .vstemplate file, which contains the metadata needed to create a project or item from the template and to display the template in the New Project and Add New Item windows.
For more information about .vstemplate files, see Template tags and Template parameters.
When these files are compressed into a .zip file and put in the correct folder, Visual Studio automatically displays them in the following places:
- Project templates appear in the New Project window.
- Item templates appear in the Add New Item window.
For more information about template folders, see How to: Locate and organize templates.