Introduction

Visual Studio extensions (VSIX packages) allow you to customize and enhance the Visual Studio IDE. Whether you want to add new commands, tool windows, editor features, or integrate with external services, extensions give you full access to Visual Studio’s extensibility APIs.

What Can You Build?

Visual Studio extensions can add or modify almost any aspect of the IDE:

• Commands and Menus - Add custom commands to menus, toolbars, and context menus
• Tool Windows - Create dockable panels for custom UI
• Editor Extensions - Add syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, code actions, and more
• Project Templates - Create new project and item templates
• Options Pages - Add configuration pages to Tools > Options
• Debugger Integration - Extend the debugging experience
• Source Control - Integrate with version control systems

The VSIX Package

Extensions are distributed as .vsix files, which are ZIP archives containing:

• Extension manifest (extension.vsixmanifest) - Metadata about your extension
• Compiled assemblies - Your extension’s DLLs
• Resources - Images, templates, and other assets
• Dependencies - Required SDK assemblies

Extension Types

There are two main approaches to building VS extensions:

Traditional (Interop-based)

Uses COM interfaces and the legacy Visual Studio SDK. This approach:

• Provides the deepest access to VS internals
• Works with all VS versions
• Requires more boilerplate code

Community Toolkit (Modern)

The Community.VisualStudio.Toolkit simplifies extension development:

• Cleaner, modern C# APIs
• Async-first design
• Less boilerplate code
• Great for most extension scenarios

Next Steps

Ready to start building? Continue to Prerequisites to set up your development environment.