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 write better quality code by handling or simplifying IDE-related actions, keeping you focused on the important parts of coding.

VA adds, augments, and improves the existing set of context-aware navigations, refactorings, code highlighting, and code completing features for C, C++, and C# development.

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 can 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 2025 helps developers achieve C++ safety with dozens of new code checkers to automatically detect and fix code issues. Navigation and refactoring tools have been enhanced, offering smoother workflows with features like constructor navigation and method extraction. Performance has also been improved with faster parsing and startup times—especially useful for opening large projects like Unreal Engine projects. Lastly, language support has expanded to include HLSL shader, UE-specific file types, CUDA development, and other similar C++-derived formats and syntax.

Learn more about the latest changes in Visual Assist here.

• Support for Visual Studio 2026. Designed to complement VS 26 by providing fully compatible code refactoring, navigation, advanced symbol understanding, and productivity shortcuts.

• VA Intelligence. VA’s AI integration. A fully local, opt-in AI service powered by Ollama and Gemma. The first feature provides symbol explanation to contextualize symbols in a single click.

• 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. To keep up with evolving C++ standards and features, VA has been updated to support modern C++ 11, C++17 and C++20 features such as lambda expressions, smart pointers, and auto type deduction.

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

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

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

• Full parameter customization for Extract method. When extracting code into a new method, developers can now add, remove, or reorder parameters before the method is created.

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

• HLSL support and expanded shader file support. Open and work on shader files as if they were regular C++ files! Features such as navigation, syntax highlighting and coloring support, now works 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.

Watch the video below to see how it can help make your coding experience faster and easier:

Sample Features by Category

##· Unreal Engine Specific Tooling

Make your game development epic with integrated Unreal Engine support (including UE5) and new 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 has been added as of 2025.4. The first integration 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, subtle highlighting of current symbol / references, adding tooltips with type & signature info, and by 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, 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 provides 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.