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Visual Studio–Share your settings

In VSCode you can share your settings through profiles. This allows you to easily apply your UI layout, settings and extensions to multiple VSCode instances.

A similar thing is possible in Visual Studio. Settings can be exported through the Import and Export Settings Wizard:

  • Go to Tools –> Import and Export Settings
  • Choose Export selected environment settings and click on Next >
  • Now you can choose which settings should be exported. Check or uncheck the settings you want to export and click on Next >
  • Specify where you want to store your .vssettingsfile file and click on Finish
  • You can now close the wizard.

Remark: When you sign in to Visual Studio on multiple computers using the same personalization account, your settings can be synchronized across the computers.

Although the .vssettings file allows you to share a lot of configuration settings, it cannot be used to share the installed features and extensions. However this is possible through an installation configuration file(.vsconfig) and the Visual Studio Installer.

  • To export a configuration open the Visual Studio Installer
  • Click on More on the product card and choose Export configuration
  • Specify the location and click on Review details
  • Select or unselect specific components and click on Export

Here is how the exported vsconfig file looks like:

Remark: Support for extensions got included in Visual Studio 2022 v17.9. As the feature is quite new, not everything is supported yet.

Extensions can be added manually by specifying them in the extensions section in the vsconfig file:

More information

Customize & save your personal Visual Studio IDE settings - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn

Synchronize settings across multiple computers - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn

Import or export installation configurations | Microsoft Learn

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