Many developers accept these issues as just part of the job. But what if they didn’t have to be?

Visual Assist, a powerful productivity extension for Visual Studio, was built to solve the exact problems that slow developers down, without changing your entire workflow. In fact, you might already be struggling with features that have smarter, faster alternatives within reach.

In this article, we’ll explore how Visual Assist can help you improve Visual Studio performance, uncover better ways to navigate large projects, and fix annoying quirks like IntelliSense not working, especially if you’re working with Unreal Engine or C++. Whether you’re dealing with slow Visual Studio response times or you’re simply unaware of better options, this guide will show you how to reclaim your flow and speed things up.

Let’s take a closer look at the Visual Assist features that can fix what’s slowing you down.

Common Visual Studio pain points (and how Visual Assist fixes them)

In this section, we’ll explore common Visual Studio performance issues that most developers face—and how Visual Assist provides effective solutions.

Problem #1: Clunky file navigation in large projects

The problem
Working with large codebases in Visual Studio often means dealing with hundreds—or even thousands—of files spread across multiple folders. While Visual Studio’s native file explorer gets the job done, it can feel painfully sluggish when navigating complex projects. Endless scrolling and limited filtering options disrupt your focus and waste precious time.

The fix
Visual Assist’s Open File in Solution feature offers a faster, smarter alternative. Designed for performance, it allows you to locate any file instantly, even in massive solutions, using just a few keystrokes. The built-in filtering engine narrows down your results as you type, letting you jump to exactly what you need without wading through the entire project tree.

Visual Assist offers a suite of powerful navigation tools specifically designed for large solutions. These tools let you jump between files, symbols, methods, and related code with incredible speed and accuracy:

• Open File in Solution: Quickly find and open any file with just a few keystrokes. It supports filtering, wildcards, and even fuzzy search. Explore more about Open File in Solution.

Accessing the Open File in Solution feature via the VAssistX menu in Visual Studio

Visual Assist – Open File in Solution Example

• Find Symbol in Solution: Search for any class, method, or variable—even if you only remember part of the name. We will discuss more about this feature in the next section.
• Goto Related: Instantly jump between related files, like header/implementation pairs or base/derived classes. Read more on the Goto Related feature.

Go to Related feature in Visual Assist

Go to Members of the Class User

Members of the Class User

• List Methods in Current File: Navigate large files by jumping to any method or function in a dropdown list.

These features eliminate the need to scroll endlessly or manually search through your folder structure. Whether you’re working in C++, C#, or Unreal Engine code, Visual Assist helps you move through your project like a pro.

Bonus tip
Want to locate a file or symbol without knowing the exact name? Just use an asterisk * in your search. For example, typing *Manager in Open File in Solution or Find Symbol will return results like UserManager, AccountManager, and more. Fuzzy search makes finding things faster—even when your memory isn’t perfect.

Problem #2: Can’t recall the exact name of a symbol

The Problem
You’re in the zone, deep into a feature or bug fix, and you need to find a class, method, or file—but you can’t remember the exact name. Visual Studio’s default search isn’t forgiving. If your input isn’t precise, you’re met with zero results or a long list of unrelated suggestions, forcing you to waste time browsing through files manually.

The Fix
Visual Assist makes this easier with fuzzy search built into tools like Open File in Solution and Find Symbol. These features allow you to search using partial names or approximate guesses. Can’t remember if it was UserManager or AccountManager? Just type *manager, and Visual Assist will surface relevant results instantly—even if your memory is fuzzy.

Using the Find Symbol feature in Visual Assist to locate symbols quickly

Visual Assist Find Symbol example

Bonus Tip
Combine fuzzy search with filters to narrow down by file type, scope, or symbol kind. Want even more control? Use negative filters by adding -word to your search. For example, *Manager -Account shows all items with “Manager” but excludes any that include “Account”. It’s one of the fastest ways to find exactly what you need, especially in large or unfamiliar codebases.

Problem #3: Unreal Engine source code shows incorrect red squiggles

The Problem
If you’re developing with Unreal Engine in Visual Studio, you’ve probably run into frustrating red squiggles under perfectly valid code. This usually isn’t your fault—it’s IntelliSense struggling to interpret Unreal Engine’s complex macro system. These false errors clutter your editor, create confusion, and slow down your workflow.

The Fix
Visual Assist comes with dedicated Unreal Engine support that understands UE’s syntax, reflection macros, and naming conventions far better than default IntelliSense. It correctly parses Unreal code, eliminating misleading squiggles and giving you accurate suggestions. In fact, many developers choose to disable IntelliSense entirely and rely solely on Visual Assist for parsing, symbol lookup, and navigation, resulting in cleaner code views and faster performance.

Bonus Tip
You can disable IntelliSense in Visual Studio’s settings and still enjoy full code completion, navigation, and error-free parsing through Visual Assist—especially helpful when working on large UE4 or UE5 projects.

Visual Assist for Unreal Engine

Problem #4: Visual Studio lags when typing or scrolling

The Problem

When working on extensive projects, many developers experience lag in Visual Studio, particularly while typing or scrolling. This slowdown is often reported when IntelliSense is enabled, especially in large or complex codebases. Developers have observed that background parsing and real-time suggestions can affect responsiveness and break focus. In Unreal Engine projects, for example, IntelliSense may even become unresponsive, prompting many to disable it in favor of more reliable alternatives like Visual Assist.

The Fix

Visual Assist is built for speed. The parsing engine of Visual Assist operates more efficiently than IntelliSense, particularly when working with large or complex projects. The combination of disabling IntelliSense with Visual Assist’s code suggestions, navigation tools, and context-aware features will eliminate performance delays, allowing you to continue coding without interruptions.

Bonus Tip

The performance of developers improves right away when they disable IntelliSense completely and let Visual Assist handle code completion, reference finding, and symbol navigation tasks.

How to Enable Visual Assist’s Code Suggestions

Open Visual Studio.

Go to the Extensions menu ? VAssistX ? Visual Assist Options.

In the Visual Assist Options window, navigate to Suggestions.

Here you can enable the required options.

Click OK to apply the settings.

Optional: Disable IntelliSense (for best performance)

To rely only on Visual Assist and reduce lag:

• Go to Tools ? Options ? Text Editor ? C/C++ ? Advanced

Set Disable IntelliSense to True

This allows Visual Assist to fully handle code completion, navigation, and suggestions, resulting in a smoother experience, especially in large projects or when working with Unreal Engine.

Problem #5: Limited refactoring tools in Visual Studio

The Problem
While Visual Studio offers some built-in refactoring options, they often fall short, especially in complex C++ projects. Refactors like renaming symbols or introducing variables can be inconsistent, incomplete, or prone to errors depending on the context. This makes developers hesitant to trust these tools, slowing down their workflow.

The Fix
Visual Assist provides a robust and reliable set of refactoring tools designed with real-world C++ usage in mind. You get smart options like Rename, Encapsulate Field, Introduce Variable, Change Signature, and Create from Usage, all backed by deeper code understanding. These tools work more consistently and accurately across different project types and coding styles, helping you restructure code confidently and without breaking anything.

Bonus Tip

Visual Assist’s refactoring tools are not only more consistent—they’re also smarter. For example, they understand Unreal Engine macros like UFUNCTION and UPROPERTY, allowing you to safely rename or refactor even macro-decorated code that typically breaks under standard IntelliSense-based tools.

Create from Usage – Smart refactoring made easy

Try the Create from Usage feature when writing new code—it lets you generate declarations and implementations on the fly by referencing them before they exist. It’s a fast and intuitive way to build out logic without breaking your coding rhythm.

How to Use “Create from Usage” in Visual Assist

1. Just write your code as if the function, variable, or method already exists.

For example:

class MyClass {};

int main()
{
    MyClass obj;
    obj.DoSomethingUseful(); // <- Now Visual Assist can step in!
}

If DoSomethingUseful() hasn’t been declared or defined yet, Visual Assist will detect this.

2. Place your cursor on the symbol (e.g., method or variable) you just used.
3. Press Alt+Shift+Q (Visual Assist Quick Action menu)

Alternatively, right-click the symbol and look for Quick Actions and Refactorings ? Create from Usage.

Visual Assist will offer to generate the corresponding declaration and definition for you—automatically placing them in the appropriate header and source files if needed.

Declared method in MyClass

Tip:

This feature is especially useful when you’re doing test-driven development or writing out logic before formalizing structure. It keeps your flow uninterrupted by letting Visual Assist handle the boilerplate creation.

Conclusion

Visual Studio is a powerful IDE—but as your projects grow, so do the cracks in its default experience. From sluggish file navigation and limited refactoring tools to IntelliSense breakdowns in Unreal Engine projects, these friction points can quietly eat away at your productivity.

That’s where Visual Assist steps in.

Whether you’re building AAA games in Unreal Engine, managing sprawling C++ projects, or simply tired of lag and limitations, Visual Assist provides the tools to help you code faster, smarter, and more confidently. With features like fuzzy symbol search, advanced refactoring, code suggestions, and context-aware navigation, Visual Assist fills in the gaps and removes the roadblocks that slow you down.

Most importantly, it integrates seamlessly into your workflow—no steep learning curve, no drastic changes. Just better performance, deeper code understanding, and a smoother development experience.

If you’ve been struggling with Visual Studio performance, now you know: Visual Assist has the fix.

Download a free trial of Visual Assist and experience the difference for yourself.

The post Struggling with Visual Studio Performance? Visual Assist Has the Fix first appeared on Tomato Soup.

Greatly expanded code inspections with over 100 new Clang Tidy checks

The biggest item in this release is the added support for all code checks available from Clang Tidy. Code inspections are semi-automatic checks that prompt the user when Visual Assist’s engine recognizes outdated syntax or an otherwise correctable code issue. 

For context, Visual Assist’s code inspection is based on a series of checks from LLVM Clang Tidy. And before we add support for a new check, we rigorously test it for accuracy and compatibility. This process ensures that the check will give consistent suggestions for almost all use cases. In fact, this is the process undertaken for the two new added code inspections in this release—more on them later.

What we’ve added is the ability to use unevaluated Clang Tidy checkers as Code Inspections straight from Visual Assist. This greatly expands the types of code issues that can be detected with code inspections enabled. There is a slight tradeoff in that you may need to do some manual testing when using unvetted checks. Take a look at the full documented list of Clang Tidy checks.

The latest addition to our list of vetted code inspections are for bugprone-swapped-arguments and bugprone-argument-comment. These checks look for potentially swapped arguments by looking at implicit conversions and detect typos in argument comments and suggest automated fixes for them, respectively.

Lastly, we’re also announcing that code inspection is officially out of beta and is now running on Clang engine version 15.0. The beta label is mostly a formality and all functionality should function the same. If you haven’t, we highly advise enabling code inspections.

Protip: When running comprehensive code inspection checks in a file, you can sort and group issues by level. Code inspection levels refer to an arbitrary metric representing severity given to a code check. Level one signifies critical, level five being on the level of a reminder, and zero refers to unflagged checks.

Extended Shader File Customization

Due to consistent demand and great feedback, a significant portion has also been given to further improve our support for shader files. In fact, as of this release, it is in the last phases of beta testing and will most likely be available for general support very soon.

In this release, you can now use custom shader file extensions (there are no longer extensions considered “default”). Coloring and syntax highlighting has also been drastically improved, with almost all bugs ironed out as well.

Enable support for shader file parsing by accessing Visual Assist Options ->> Game Development ->> Enable support for shader files.

Integrated-style extensions menu (pre-Visual Studio 2019)

In Visual Studio 2019, the toolbars and plugins were rearranged. Instead of being able to access your plugins in the main toolbar, you had to instead go under the Extensions menu. 

For the most part, this made sense—it’s easier to find all installed plugins and access their features correspondingly. However, for users who had one or a handful of plugins or are more comfortable using the mouse instead of shortcuts, the extra step might be bothersome (e.g. mouse users with only VAX installed).

Some users expressed interest so we’ve added the option for an integrated-style menu for extensions (similar to the pre-VS 2019 setup). 

This new menu mode can be enabled via Extensions ->> VAssistX ->> Visual Assist Options ->> Display ->> Switch to Legacy Style Main Menu.

Implement Virtual Methods context menu option to check / uncheck all.

The last of the new features in this release is a quality of life change. Inheriting from other classes is made much easier and intuitive using the Implement Virtual Methods feature.

While in the dialog, we added a small tweak that allows users to check and uncheck all possible methods using a simple checkbox. Neat little addition, we hope.

Visual Assist’s Implement Virtual Methods feature provides a neat little dialog to make inheriting from other classes quick and intuitive.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where installer exe could report errors after a successful install.
• Improved auto type deduction for const, pointers and chained function calls.
• Fixed issue where Code Inspections could fail with the latest MSVC includes.
• Fixed issue where shader coloring may not be applied to the correct file extensions.
• Fixed issue where shader coloring sometimes not applied to files opened automatically on solution load.
• Fixed issues which could lead to the VA Navigation Bar being drawn incorrectly.  
• Fixed issues which could lead to missing icons.
• Improved tab completion in C# to interact better with build in tooling.
• Fixed minor visual theming issues in various VA dialogs. 

Much thanks to those who submitted their feedback and bug reports. Keep ‘em coming. Send us a message or start a thread on the user forums for bug reports or suggestions. Happy coding!

The post Visual Assist 2023.2 released first appeared on Tomato Soup.

What Is Visual Studio?

Visual Studio 2022 is one of the most powerful and popular IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) among .Net and C++ developers. It can be used for the development of various types of software, including websites, web services, mobile, desktop, web apps, games, and so on.

Visual Studio provides many features that speed up and simplify the process of writing and testing code, including a code editor with IntelliSense and code refactoring, an integrated debugger that can work as a source-level and machine-level debugger, tools for creating the user interface, a code profiler, etc.

You can download the Visual Studio installer from the official website.

How To Use Visual Studio For C++?

C++ is a popular low-level, high-performance programming language that can be used to create many different types of applications. Visual Studio has all the tools you need to easily write C++ applications.

Visual Studio supports various versions of the standard for the C++ programming language and allows you to use all its modern features. With Visual Studio C++, you can perform classic Microsoft Windows desktop development or universal Windows applications for HoloLens, Surface Hub, PC, and Xbox development.

In addition, you can use Microsoft Visual C++ for Linux development, mobile, and game development.

What Are The Most Common Visual Studio C++ Pain Points?

Although Visual Studio offers many useful tools and is a great solution for C++ development, there are pain points that developers who use it occasionally run into.

Poor performance

While it is designed for C++, these projects can sometimes be extra complex and Visual Studio may struggle performance-wise. It would require more resources such as disk space and operating system memory. This is especially noticeable when working with large projects.

Long build time and slow compilation

The process of building projects takes a lot of time. The compilation is slow, which greatly complicates and slows down the process of finding and correcting bugs in the source code.

Stutters and freezes during coding

Sometimes there are cases where the machine freezes during coding, which leads to the need to reboot it. In this case, the programmers need to start over the unfinished work should they be unlucky enough to have forgotten to save.

Chaotic file organization

When working with C++ files in Visual Studio, you need to first create folders and files on the computer disk. Then you need to create a project in Visual Studio and add the already created files and folders to it. The project only lists the names and paths of files and folders that should already exist on your drive. This is different from how Visual Studio works with other programming languages and is awkward and confusing, especially on collaborative projects or complex solutions.

Understanding Complex C++ Language

C++ is a complex programming language that supports higher-order types, a standard library for CPU cache line sizing, dimensional analysis, and other functional paradigms. Even experienced C++ developers have to learn hidden features and discover new ways to optimize their development.

So, it’s time to solve the most common Visual Studio pain points.

What Are The Visual Studio Extensions Available In The Market?

Visual Studio Marketplace [1] provides a wide range of extensions to enhance the capabilities of Visual Studio. GitHub Extension for Visual Studio, CodeMaid, and Visual Assist are very popular among the developer community.

By making it simple to connect to and collaborate with your repositories on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise, GitHub Extension improves Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017. It creates new repositories or clones existing ones to get working together.

Our C#, C++, F#, VB, PHP, PowerShell, R, JSON, XAML, XML, ASP, HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, JavaScript, and TypeScript coding may be cleaned up and made simpler with the help of the open source CodeMaid Visual Studio extension.

More extensions are available in the marketplace to enhance the capabilities of Visual Studio and improve productivity. However, Visual Assist provides solutions for most Visual Studio C++ pain points mentioned earlier. The following section will discuss it in detail.

The Pain Killer You Need – Visual Assist

Visual Assist is a productivity extension for Visual Studio that has many features for refactoring, quick navigation, code generation, and much more. It provides tools for the automatic detection and correction of errors in the code, automatic understanding, and completion of the code, syntax highlighting, and improved debugging functions. Using Visual Assist greatly simplifies the process of coding in Visual Studio C++ and increases development productivity.

Advantages of Using Whole Tomato –  Visual Assist

Let’s list the main benefits of using Whole Tomato Visual Assist.

Increase Your Productivity

Visual Assist offers advanced navigation features that let you quickly go to any file, method, reference, or code symbol in your projects or solutions. You can also automate code refactoring activities. Advanced features of automatic code generation make the process of writing code as fast as possible, which significantly increases development productivity.

Fast & Responsive Tooling

All Visual Assist commands and tools are responsive and work quickly, which allows you to use them even when working with large and complex projects.

Helps Optimize Workflows

With Visual Assist tools that make code generation and debugging easier, you can optimize and streamline your project workflows.

Adds Support (Fills Gaps)

If you have any problems with Visual Assist, you can use our knowledge base or search for a solution to your problem in the forum. In addition, there is technical support where you can get answers to all questions about working with the Visual Assist extension.

Everything Becomes Customizable

You can fully customize Visual Assist to your liking. This includes customizing colors and shortcuts.

Final Verdict

Visual Assist is the best extension for Visual Studio C++ development, which has numerous advantages and makes the coding process quick and easy. Give Whole Tomato a spin. Sign up for free.

FAQ

Which Visual Studio is Best for C++?

Visual Studio is a widely used IDE that is excellent for development in C++ and supports various standards of this programming language. Another popular Microsoft product used for C++ coding is Visual Studio Code. It is an open-source, cross-platform code editor that offers “Microsoft C/C++” extensions for C++ programming.

How do I Find Build Errors in Visual Studio?

To find build errors in Visual Studio you should choose View -> Error list or use the shortcut Ctrl+\, E. In addition to errors, you can also view a list of warnings and other messages.

How do I Resolve to Build Errors in Visual Studio?

Select the error message in Visual Studio and press F1. Visual Studio will open the documentation page for this error, where you can find workarounds.

[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/

The post Solving The Most Common Visual Studio C++ Pain Points first appeared on Tomato Soup.

In this updated guide, we’ll explore why C++ developers should leverage Visual Studio extensions and review the top five must-have extensions that boost productivity, code quality, and development speed.

Why Visual Studio is the one of the best IDE for C++ development

C++ remains one of the most widely used languages for software development across industries, from game development and embedded systems to finance and enterprise applications.

Microsoft Visual Studio is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) designed to streamline C++ development with advanced features. It enhances code writing through intelligent suggestions and automation, making programming more efficient. Developers benefit from seamless navigation and refactoring tools that help maintain clean, structured code. The IDE also includes robust debugging and performance analysis capabilities, ensuring optimized applications. Additionally, Visual Studio supports cross-platform development, allowing developers to build and run C++ applications on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

However, to truly maximize productivity, developers rely on Visual Studio extensions that introduce advanced navigation, error checking, and debugging tools.

Visual Studio Extensions: How they help you write code faster and easier

There are a lot of extensions for Visual Studio. They provide additional functionality and convenient tools that allow you to simplify, speed up, and automate the process of writing code, resulting in increased overall productivity.

Since there is a large selection of Visual Studio extensions, it can be difficult for some to choose the best one. So, go through the list of the Top 5 Visual Studio Extensions.

Top 5 Visual Studio Extensions

We have selected the 5 best Visual Studio Extensions and analyzed their main functionalities, advantages, and disadvantages. Read and choose the extension that suits you better than others.

Visual Assist

Whole Tomato’s Visual Assist is a popular powerful extension that provides a lot of functions to significantly simplify and speed up the process of writing code. It functions as an enhancement of Visual Studio’s IntelliSense and provides essential features such as:

• Quick navigation. You can easily navigate to any file, method, or symbol in your code.
• Easy formatting. Visual Assist is an unopinionated code formatter that automatically formats code according to the given style.
• Code and error correction.
• Refactoring allows you to simplify and improve code readability.
• Automatic code generation and auto-completion make the process of writing code much faster.
• Ability to use ready-made code snippets.
• Automatic error correction in code and comments when typing.
• Ability to search files using regular expressions and patterns.
• Ability to automatically diagnose and correct common programming errors.
• Specialized support for Unreal Engine development

In addition, Visual Assist supports the popular and powerful 3D graphics development tool Unreal Engine. This feature allows you to easily create high-performance 3D applications using C++ and Unreal Engine.

ReSharper C++

An alternative popular extension that allows you to increase development productivity is ReSharper. It provides quick search and navigation features, auto-completion and code generation, refactoring, and more.

The main disadvantage of ReSharper is its slower performance especially on larger projects, which can cause features to bog down and operations to freeze.

Code Runner

Another good Visual Studio extension is Code Runner. It is a lightweight extension that allows developers to quickly execute snippets of C++ code without setting up a full project. Ideal for testing algorithms and debugging on the fly.

It allows you to run the source code of the file, the selected code snippet, or a custom command and view the results of the invocation in the Output Window with no need for terminal interaction.

Code Compare

Code Compare is a handy tool for comparing and merging files and folders. It highlights the inserted, deleted, and modified text in rows in detail.

Primarily used for comparing and merging C++ files and folders, its key features include:

• Side-by-side comparison of code changes
• Easy merging and conflict resolution
• Integration with Git, Mercurial, and TFS

Code Compare allows you to collapse unchanged areas of text, edit files on the fly, and easily merge using the mouse pointer. However, Code Compare for Visual Studio IDE can operate slowly.

SonarLint

SonarLint is a static code analyzer that allows you to find bugs and code quality and security issues. It uses hundreds of rules to analyze the code. You can disable some rules on the fly or exclude some project files from the analysis.

Final Verdict

Using Visual Studio Extensions greatly simplifies the coding process and reduces the number of errors. In this article, we talked about the top 5 Visual Studio C++ extensions and analyzed their advantages and disadvantages. You should choose the right extension for your according to your budget and requirements.

If you’re looking for the best all-around productivity extension, Visual Assist provides faster navigation, better IntelliSense, powerful refactoring, and Unreal Engine support—making it a must-have for professionals working on large projects. And depending on your needs, other extensions like ReSharper, Code Compare, and SonarLint can extend the capabilities of your IDE.

Install a free trial version of Visual Assist and make sure that it is the best C++ extension on the market.

Download plugins and extensions:

Download Visual Assist for free:
? Try Visual Assist Today

Check out the latest Visual Studio extensions:
? Explore the Visual Studio Marketplace

FAQ

Is Visual Studio a good IDE for C++?

Visual Studio is one of the best IDEs for C++ as it provides powerful functionality for quickly writing code, debugging, and testing software.

Is Visual Studio 2022 good for C++?

Absolutely! Visual Studio 2022 introduced faster performance, better IntelliSense, and native support for C++20 and C++23, making it an excellent choice for C++ developers.

How can I be more productive in VS Code?

In order to be more productive when developing using Visual Studio Code, you should use hotkeys, functionality for quick navigation,  search and replace symbols. In addition, you can install code extensions that provide even more functionality to increase development productivity.

In which ways can you extend the functionality of Visual Studio?

Visual Studio has a large selection of extensions available in the Visual Studio marketplace that you can easily install to extend its functionality.

The post Level Up Your C++ Productivity with Visual Studio Plugins and Extensions first appeared on Tomato Soup.