🎨 Magic Output
Colorize Your Visual Studio Output Window for Better Readability!
Magic Output automatically adds color highlighting to the Visual Studio Output window, making it easier to spot errors, warnings, and important messages at a glance.
✨ Features
- 🔴 Errors - Bright red highlighting for errors, exceptions, and failures
- 🟠 Warnings - Orange highlighting for warnings and deprecated items
- 🟢 Success - Green highlighting for successful operations and completions
- 🔵 Info - Blue highlighting for informational messages
- ⚪ Debug - Gray highlighting for debug and verbose output
- 🟣 Trace - Purple highlighting for trace messages
🚀 Installation
From Visual Studio Marketplace
- Open Visual Studio
- Go to Extensions → Manage Extensions
- Search for "Magic Output"
- Click Download and restart Visual Studio
Manual Installation
- Download the latest
.vsix file from Releases
- Close all Visual Studio instances
- Double-click the
.vsix file
- Follow the installation wizard
- Restart Visual Studio
📖 Usage
Zero configuration required! Magic Output works automatically once installed.
- Open any project in Visual Studio
- Build your project or run any command that generates output
- Open the Output window (View → Output or
Ctrl+Alt+O)
- Watch as your output messages are automatically colorized!
Smart Pattern Recognition
Magic Output intelligently recognizes patterns in your output:
| Pattern |
Color |
Examples |
| Error |
Red |
error, exception, failed, failure, fatal, critical |
| Warning |
Orange |
warning, warn, caution, deprecated |
| Success |
Green |
success, succeeded, completed, passed, done, OK |
| Info |
Blue |
info, information, note, starting, building |
| Debug |
Gray |
debug, verbose |
| Trace |
Purple |
trace, tracing |
⚙️ Settings & Customization
Access settings via Tools → Options → Magic Output → Colors
Available Options:
Colors:
- Error Color (default: #FF6464 - Light Red)
- Warning Color (default: #FFC864 - Orange)
- Success Color (default: #64FF64 - Light Green)
- Info Color (default: #64B4FF - Light Blue)
- Debug Color (default: #B4B4B4 - Gray)
- Trace Color (default: #C896FF - Purple)
Keywords:
Customize which words trigger each color. Use comma-separated values:
- Error Keywords
- Warning Keywords
- Success Keywords
- Info Keywords
- Debug Keywords
- Trace Keywords
General:
- Enable/Disable colorization
- Case-sensitive matching
Example Customization:
Add your own keywords like "FAIL,BOOM,CRASH" for errors, or change error color to bright red #FF0000.
🔧 Supported Visual Studio Versions
- ✅ Visual Studio 2026
- ✅ Visual Studio 2022 (17.x)
🤝 Contributing
Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:
- Fork the repository
- Create a feature branch (
git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
- Commit your changes (
git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
- Push to the branch (
git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
- Open a Pull Request
Development Setup
- Clone the repository
- Open
MagicOutput.sln in Visual Studio
- Ensure you have Visual Studio Extension Development workload installed
- Build the solution
- Press
F5 to debug (opens experimental VS instance)
🐛 Known Issues
- Some third-party extensions may conflict with output colorization
- Very large output windows (10,000+ lines) may experience slight lag
Report issues at: GitHub Issues
📄 License
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
💖 Acknowledgments
- Inspired by Output Enhancer and similar productivity tools
- Built with the Visual Studio Extensibility SDK
- Thanks to all contributors and users!
Made with ❤️ for Visual Studio developers
If you find Magic Output useful, please ⭐ star the repository and leave a review on the Visual Studio Marketplace!
