Visual Assist: Helping developers write better quality code, with less friction and more focus.

Visual Assist is a productivity plugin for Visual Studio that helps developers read, navigate, refactor, and write C, C++, and C# code — handling or simplifying IDE actions so you stay focused on the parts of coding that matter.

VA adds, augments, and improves Visual Studio's context-aware navigation, refactoring, code highlighting, and code completion. It runs on its own parser, so it stays fast and accurate where the built-in tooling slows down — in the large, legacy, or macro-heavy code where IntelliSense can grind or break. If you work in Unreal Engine, game engines, simulation, embedded, or large enterprise C++, that's exactly where Visual Assist earns its keep.

Visual Assist is one of the definitive plugins that conceptualized and shaped most of the current features you see now in Visual Studio. And to this day it continues to develop user-centric design for maximum productivity and usability.

Read more about the features and benefits provided by Visual Assist.

Main Features of using Visual Assist

• Be a faster developer with well-designed navigation features. VA reimagines how you navigate code with specially designed UI and context-aware features like GoTo Implementation, Find References, Find Symbols, and Open File in Solution.

• Quicker setup times with a parallel parser. Visual Assist uses a faster parser that works in parallel with Visual Studio's. It's designed for large solutions so you can open and jump into your projects 800% faster.

• Do more with fewer clicks. Visual Assist minimizes required actions with refactorings and code completion. Auto-complete code, detect and fix issues, and get instant, logical suggestions based on where you are in your code.

• Specialized support for game development projects. The plugin is designed with Unreal and Unity development in mind, from performance and navigation improvements to understanding engine-specific syntax and file types.

Latest release highlights

Visual Assist 2026 brings local, opt-in AI into your everyday C++ workflow and full support for Visual Studio 2026 — while continuing to sharpen the navigation, refactoring, and parsing it's known for. Code intelligence has expanded, including Clang-powered macro expansion and smarter analysis that helps you understand complex code even without IntelliSense. Navigation and refactoring are faster and more responsive in large solutions like Unreal Engine projects, and parsing improvements reduce startup times when first opening massive codebases. Language support now spans HLSL shaders, Unreal Engine file types, CUDA, and other C++-derived syntaxes.

Learn more about the latest changes in Visual Assist here.

• VA Intelligence. VA's opt-in AI integration, fully local and powered by Ollama and Gemma. Understand a block of code with Explain Code, or quickly transform and update code logic with Change Code with AI. It runs on your hardware, only when you invoke it, and shows you a diff before anything changes.

• Support for Visual Studio 2026. Designed to complement VS 2026 with fully compatible code refactoring, navigation, advanced symbol understanding, and productivity shortcuts. (Visual Assist also supports Visual Studio 2017, 2019, and 2022.)

• Significantly faster initial parsing. Visual Assist has significantly improved its parsing and indexing speeds, making the tool faster and more responsive even when opening very large codebases.

• Expanded language support. Support for modern C++ 11, C++17, and C++20 features such as lambda expressions, smart pointers, and auto type deduction.

• 60+ code inspections for C++ safety. A major expansion of code-inspection checkers focused on C++ safety. Write safer, more reliable, memory-safe C++ with real-time feedback, and catch subtle bugs and vulnerabilities long before they reach production.

• Enhanced support for C++ modules. Module import suggestions were added in 2025.1, with navigation and find-references support for module names and *.ixx files.

• Unreal Engine 5 and Unity support. Work across massive UE5 projects with full navigation and refactoring tools, and gain official Unity integration, including shader file support introduced in 2023.4.

• Side-by-side macro expansion with Clang. Hover to see VA and Clang macro resolutions side by side, with syntax highlighting and clean formatting, even when IntelliSense is disabled.

• CUDA core development. Parse and analyze CUDA-related syntax, libraries, and APIs for IntelliSense-like features, navigation, and highlighting in CUDA (.cu) files.

• HLSL and expanded shader file support. Open and work on shader files as if they were regular C++ files. Navigation, syntax highlighting, and coloring now work in HLSL, Unreal's USH/USF files, and even custom shader files.

Productivity tool for C/C++ and C# with support for UE4 & UE5

Visual Assist fills gaps in the coding experience of Microsoft Visual Studio, making a great IDE a phenomenal one. Add navigation and syntax highlighting for specialized languages and applications not natively supported by the IDE.

· Unreal Engine Specific Tooling

Make your game development epic with integrated Unreal Engine support (including UE5) and features that run as fast as your code. Save time, see more, and work smarter.

· Navigation

Move around your code efficiently and easily — to any file, method, symbol, or symbol reference in your projects and solutions. Navigate with commands like Find Symbol in Solution, Open File in Solution, Find References, and GoTo Related.

Go to related locations of any symbol, including base classes, derived classes, constructors, and members.

Navigate throughout a solution via VA Hashtags in comments. VA Hashtags are user-defined, shared bookmarks that move with code. You can also use the feature as a task list.

Navigate among VA Hashtags using a dedicated tool window or local context menu.

· Refactoring

Reduce the complexity of your code, improve its readability, and make it extensible without changing its external behavior. Refactor with commands like Rename, Encapsulate Field, Introduce Variable, and Change Signature.

Use Change Signature to add, remove, and reorder parameters in definitions and call sites.

Use Extract Method to create a new method from an existing block of code. It also changes the original code to invoke the new method.

· Code Generation

Generate code quickly with commands like Add Missing Case Statements, Implement Interface / Virtual Methods, and Create from Usage.

Create methods, variables, and enums without leaving your place in code.

· Coding Assistance

Write code with assistance that doesn't get in your way. Select using enhanced member listboxes, surround selections with code snippets, quickly grow selections on logical boundaries, and accept suggestions that appear before you type.

Suggestions include relevant bits of nearby code.

· Code Understanding

Make sense of complex or unfamiliar code with an assortment of informative fields, highlights that update as you move about code, and enhanced syntax coloring.

VA provides timely and contextual hints with tool windows, browsers, and fields. Get information more often, and with more thorough content to help you make sense of code.

VA Intelligence — VA's AI integration, added as of 2025.4. It uses local AI to analyze a symbol and its references, giving you a clear, context-aware summary of what it does so you can understand unfamiliar code faster.

Visual Assist makes complex code understandable at a glance by enhancing syntax coloring, subtly highlighting the current symbol and its references, adding tooltips with type and signature info, and providing new UI such as the VA Navigation Bar, VA File Outline, and more.

· Debug Assistance

Use debugger enhancements in Visual Assist to shorten the time required to debug native C/C++. Browse PDBs efficiently, resolve symbols in text-only call stacks, and use the VA Step Filter to step over trusted methods in argument lists.

· Tool Windows

Access tool windows for a hierarchy of header files, a list of recently visited places, and an outline of the current file that allows drag-and-drop to rearrange its contents. VA Outline provides an overview of your code, simplifying navigation and giving you an accessible view of essential information.

· VA Code Snippets

Expand frequently typed segments of code with a more powerful version of the like-named feature in the IDE. Expand symbols from the current context, prompt for user input, and edit VA Snippets in a custom editor.

· Code Correction

Correct typing mistakes as you make them, including incorrect symbol case, invalid pointer notation, and spelling errors in strings and comments.

Ready to try it? Download Visual Assist — 30-day free trial. Fully featured.