Your Visual Studio installations, beautifully organized ✨
Visual Studio Toolbox is a sleek system tray application for Windows that helps you manage all your Visual Studio installations in one place. Think of it as your personal command center for Visual Studio! 🚀
💡 Inspired by JetBrains Toolbox - bringing the same convenience to the Visual Studio ecosystem!
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| 🔍 Auto-Detection | Automatically discovers all VS 2019, 2022, and 2026 installations |
| 🎨 Beautiful UI | Modern WinUI 3 interface with light/dark mode support |
| 🚀 Quick Launch | Launch any VS instance with a single click |
| 🧪 Experimental Hives | See and launch experimental/custom VS hives |
| 💻 Developer Shells | Launch VS Developer Command Prompt or PowerShell |
| 📁 Quick Access | Open installation folders and AppData directories |
| 🖥️ Windows Terminal | Integrates with your Windows Terminal profiles |
| 📌 System Tray | Lives quietly in your system tray until needed |
| ⚙️ Configurable | Startup and window behavior settings |
| 🪟 Custom Chrome | Sleek custom title bar with VS purple branding |
See all your Visual Studio installations at a glance, including version info, build numbers, and channel badges:
Hover over any installation to highlight it with the signature purple accent:
Access powerful options for each installation - open folders, launch dev shells, and more:
Configure startup behavior and window preferences:
- 🪟 Windows 10/11
- 📦 .NET 10 SDK
- 🎨 Windows App SDK 1.8+
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/CalvinAllen/VSToolbox.git
# Navigate to the project
cd VSToolbox
# Build and run
dotnet run --project src/CodingWithCalvin.VSToolbox- Click the
▶️ play button to launch Visual Studio - Click the ⚙️ gear button for more options:
- 📂 Open Explorer - Open the VS installation folder
- 💻 VS CMD Prompt - Launch Developer Command Prompt
- 🐚 VS PowerShell - Launch Developer PowerShell
- 📁 Open Local AppData - Access VS settings and extensions
- Launch on startup - Start Visual Studio Toolbox when Windows starts
- Start minimized - Launch directly to the system tray
- Minimize to tray - Hide to system tray when minimizing
- Close to tray - Hide to system tray instead of exiting
- Click the tray icon to show/hide the window
- Right-click for quick menu (Show / Exit)
VSToolbox/
├── 📁 src/
│ ├── 📁 CodingWithCalvin.VSToolbox/ # 🎨 WinUI 3 Application
│ │ ├── 📁 Views/ # XAML pages
│ │ ├── 📁 ViewModels/ # MVVM view models
│ │ └── 📁 Services/ # App services
│ │
│ └── 📁 CodingWithCalvin.VSToolbox.Core/ # 📦 Core Library
│ ├── 📁 Models/ # Data models
│ └── 📁 Services/ # VS detection & launch
│
└── 📁 tests/ # 🧪 Unit tests
| Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|
| 💜 C# 13 | Language |
| 🎯 .NET 10 | Runtime |
| 🎨 WinUI 3 | UI Framework |
| 📦 Windows App SDK 1.8 | Windows APIs |
| 🔔 H.NotifyIcon.WinUI | System tray |
| 🧰 CommunityToolkit.Mvvm | MVVM pattern |
Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:
- 🍴 Fork the repository
- 🌿 Create a feature branch (
git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature) - 💾 Commit your changes (
git commit -m 'Add amazing feature') - 📤 Push to the branch (
git push origin feature/amazing-feature) - 🎉 Open a Pull Request
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
- 🙏 Microsoft for Visual Studio and WinUI
- 💡 JetBrains Toolbox for the inspiration
- 🎨 The .NET community for amazing libraries
Made with 💜 by Coding with Calvin
⭐ Star this repo if you find it useful! ⭐
