See what's new in VA 2026.2

Now supports
Visual Studio 2026

Write and navigate C++ at the speed of thought.

Visual Assist supercharges Visual Studio with instant navigation, real-time code analysis, smarter refactoring, and a unique parallel parser that understands even massive C++ codebases for instant, contextual results.

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Available on Visual Studio

Instant Navigation Find what you need fast

One-click refactoring Modernize and maintain code

Unreal Engine optimized Features for game developers

Stay in flow Stays out of your way

Safer code Detects and corrects code issues

From smarter navigation to safer refactoring, Visual Assist removes friction from everyday coding tasks. Its highly aware and context-driven design gives you timely suggestions so you keep moving.

9.6 / Quality of Support

9.7 / Ease of Use

1.5m / Downloads

Main benefits

All-in-one productivity toolkit

Speed and responsiveness that scales with your C++ project

Visual Assist's parallel parsing engine handles the scale and complexity that native IntelliSense can't. Instantly navigate million-line projects like Unreal code bases. No lag, no indexing delays, no crashes. Stay in flow, even in projects where Visual Studio slows to a crawl.

Instant results. No indexing delays.

Context-aware, always ready project navigations.

Visual Assist understands your code contextually – tracking connections across your entire codebase as you type. Find symbols, references, and definitions instantly, with accuracy that doesn't degrade when IntelliSense lags or breaks. Always ready, always reliable.

Get contextual assistance from anywhere. Even as you type.

Optimized for Unreal Engine's massive C++ architecture

Your tool works best when it actually understands the engine. VA is tailor-made for the large Unreal Engine codebases, macros, and generated structures. Get helpful context and navigation as you code, making UE development feel more natural without breaking your flow.

VA’s Find References dialog understands Unreal Engine’s C++ and Blueprint’s class inheritance system.

Navigate anywhere, instantly

Stop wasting hours tabbing through files. Open any class, jump to any symbol, or find every reference in your codebase with just a few keystrokes—even in massive projects like Unreal Engine. No more "sorry, it took all day to find this symbol." Just instant navigation that keeps you in flow.

Minimize context switching with accessible GoTo and Find Symbol dialogs.

Confidently refactor at scale

Confidently rename a variable across 200 files. Restructure a function used in dozens of places. Extract messy code into clean methods. Code inspections flag outdated practices to help adopt modern C++ safety standards. What would take hours manually happens in seconds—and it works across your entire solution.

Confidently rename a symbol across your entire solution—no matter the project size.

Skip the repetitive typing

Write a class declaration and instantly generate all the function definitions. Missing an include? Add it with one click. Visual Assist handles the mechanical, repetitive parts of C++ so you can focus on solving problems. No more copying syntax from old files or hunting down the right header path.

Easily set up implementation stubs for methods in a class declaration. Parameters between declarations and implementations will consistently follow user preferences.

Detects code issues and automatically suggests fixes

Using a parallel parsing engine, Visual Assist uses contextual hints and code checkers to not only ensure that your code builds, but also follows the safest C++ coding conventions.

VA automatically detects the missing include directive and offers to add it in a single click.

Works on non-compiling, unbuildable code

Unlike IntelliSense and other plugins, VA’s non-compiling parser keeps refactoring, navigation, and search running smoothly—even with broken code, half-written declarations, and mid-refactor changes.

VA’s navigations and code checkers still function regardless of the errors present in the code.

VA INTELLIGENCE

AI-powered features that explain symbols and accelerate code comprehension

Code Correction

Automatically fixes typing mistakes, especially symbol case and pointer notation.

Code Generation

Generate code faster with Create From Usage and context-aware templates.

Code Snippets

Expand frequently-typed code segments with powerful, customizable snippets.

Code Understanding

Make sense of complex code with tool windows, browsers, and contextual information.

Coding Assistance

Smart suggestions that save typing without getting in your way.

Find References

Faster, more powerful reference finding with cloneable result windows.

Navigation

Move through code with speed—find any file, symbol, or reference instantly.

Tool windows

VA Hashtags, VA View, and VA Outline provide high-level IDE access and views

Code Inspection

Detects code smells and provides fixes.

Code maintenance

Reduce code complexity while improving readability and maintainability.

Debugging Assistance

Make debugging less tedious.

See all features

Read what our users say about us

Streamline multi-step processes into one click or keystroke

If I lose my hands I could type with my mouth. Take my VA and I'm done.
It doesn't write the code for me, but it provides the tools for me to write it faster and better. I'm getting to really like the VA Code Inspection and the Extract Method really helps.

Mark T.

Senior Software Engineer, C++

Complete twice as much work in the same time

Although I haven't done a controlled study, I suspect I get done with twice as much in the same amount of time thanks to VA for certain kinds of programming work where reading existing code is essential.

Verified User — Computer Games Industry, Small Business

C++ and C# development with Visual Assist

Good performance on large projects, handy for everyday workflow.

The most performant solution among several alternatives I've tried on a large project.

Victor I.

C++ Developer

Save an hour’s worth of context-switching every day with smarter navigation.

The time saved [by using VA’s navigation] is quite incalculable to the point where there's just no reason for anyone to ever use Visual Studio without Visual Assist. It's absolutely needed for professional programming.

Ryan V. — Game Director

Manages codebase for game development

Get a 30% productivity boost in Unreal game development.

Visual Assist makes navigating a very large codebase like Unreal Engine practical. I rely almost every day on its ability to open a class directly without knowing what file contains it. I feel utterly limited when I sit down at a Visual Studio installation that doesn't have Visual Assist.

Kevin M. — Professional C++ Developer, Mid-Market

Programs in Unreal Engine daily

Refactor Code 10x Faster Than Manual Edits

Refactoring options far exceed Visual Studio's. Symbol highlighting is perfect—you can immediately see where a variable is written to and read from. Find Symbol, Search Files, Open File are all a million times faster than in Visual Studio and they are color-highlighted.

Sean D. — Principal Software Engineer, Enterprise

Managing large-scale enterprise codebases (1000+ employees)

Academic license program

Visual Assist for Education

Free

Students

Free

Students and learners with verified educational email addresses are eligible for a complimentary license of Visual Assist. Check with your university or program if they have existing packages with Whole Tomato and they can provide you free access.

Get to know more

Learn more about Visual Assist

Starting out

Top 10 Visual Assist features

Discover the ultimate guide to boosting your coding efficiency. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this offers practical insights to help you harness Visual Assist’s full potential.

Learn by watching

Visit our YouTube channel

Explore tutorials, and in-depth guides to enhance your coding skills, featuring everything from beginner basics to advanced features. Perfect for developers looking to optimize their workflow!

Explore in depth

Visual Assist Documentation

The Visual Studio documentation serves as a strategic resource for developers, offering a high-level overview of the toll’s capabilities.

Documentation reflects the latest build of Visual Assist.

Browse

Browse documentation using the navigation menu in the left margin.

Search

Search documentation using the edit field below the navigation menu. Use the search function on the main website to search the website, documentation, and knowledge base simultaneously.

Mobile Layout

Click the divider between the navigation menu and page body to hide/show the navigation menu.

Callouts

Throughout documentation, callouts identify information that applies to limited audiences. For example:

Visual Studio 2008 and older

Editors do not support zoom.

Whole Tomato Software

Maker of Visual Assist, a productivity tool for C/C++ and C# developers of Microsoft Visual Studio.

4001 W. Parmer Lane,
Suite 125,
Austin, TX 78727
US
E-Fax: 512.226.8441

[email protected]

Features in Visual Assist

Visual Assist has a wealth of features to enhance developer productivity. Improve virtually every Microsoft IDE you have with the multitude of features that comprise Visual Assist.

Fully functional for 30 days

Download Free Trial

Navigation

Move about your code with newfound ease—to any file, method, symbol, or reference in your projects and solutions. Get anywhere from anywhere.

Refactoring

Reduce the complexity of your code, improve its readability, and make it extensible without changing its external behavior. Refactor legacy code, code you inherit, or the first version of your own work.

Code Generation

Generate code faster than you think possible, even if you use just a handful of the features in Visual Assist. As you become a proficient user, write and update code even faster.

Coding Assistance

Write code faster with assistance that doesn't get in your way, especially when you're on a roll. Visual Assist suggests completions only if they save you serious typing, and quietly fixes mistakes in your wake.

Code Understanding

Make sense of complex code, or code you haven't touched in a long time, with an assortment of tool windows, browsers, and fields that provide information where and when you need it.

Code Correction

Watch Visual Assist correct mistakes as you make them, especially errors in symbol case and pointer notation. Type entirely in lower case, and watch Visual Assist correct the case of all of your symbols. Save the shift key for your definitions.

Code Inspection

Inspect your code for specific quality issues as you edit. The Code Inspection feature of Visual Assist, based on LLVM/Clang, diagnoses and fixes typical programming errors, like style violations, interface misuse, and bugs that can be deduced via static analysis.

Code Snippets

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

Debug Assistance

Use the VA Memory View and the VA Step Filter included with Visual Assist to shorten the time required to debug native C/C++.

Tool Windows

View code from 30,000 feet, and rearrange code so it's easier to understand and maintain. Tool windows in Visual Assist supply entirely new functionality to the IDE, and bring together oft-used built-in functionality to more efficient tool windows.

Source Links

Connect comment substrings to external applications and websites, such as bug trackers, case managers, documentation, and source code control systems.

Configuration

Adjust the multitude of features in Visual Assist to suit your programming environment and habits. Find your favorite features, and make them hum for maximum productivity.

Navigate quickly with Find References that's faster, more useful, and available for more symbols.

Refactor with Change Signature to reorder, rename, add, and delete parameters.

Refactor code easily with essential commands such as Change Signature.

Generate code in top-down style with Create From Usage that creates enums, variables, and methods.

Crank out code with assistance that's smart enough to offer suggestions before you type.

Understand code faster with meaningful use of color, italics, and bold.

Correct spelling errors in strings and comments, as you type or in batch mode.

Edit powerful Code Snippets in a custom editor, including snippets to format the output of refactoring and code generation.

Debug native C/C++ faster with filters that cause the debugger to step over select methods in argument lists.

Rely on new tool windows that provide code outlines, lists of recent modifications, and header hierarchies.

Configure your favorite features in Visual Assist to suit your programming environment and habits.

for Visual Studio 2012-2017

SourceLinks, a standalone extension for Visual Studio, was retired June 2017. An improved version of the extension is now available as a feature of Visual Assist.

Learn more about the Source Links feature of Visual Assist.

Welcome to the support hub for Visual Assist.

Every license of Visual Assist and timely renewal of software maintenance includes a year of technical support. If your software maintenance is current, or you are in trial mode, contact us via community forums to obtain technical support, report a bug, or request a feature.

Find out if your software maintenance is current via VAssistX | Help | About.

If you need technical support and your software maintenance has expired, request a quote to renew, or post to our community forums. We actively monitor our forums but provide support at our discretion.

Lost Serial Number or Activation Key

If you need your serial number or your legacy, two-line activation key, contact us whether or not your software maintenance is current.

Develop games faster & easier in Visual Studio C++

Go beyond the limitations of Visual Studio with Visual Assist’s tailored features and support for Unreal Engine 4 & 5. Experience context-aware suggestions, snappy performance, and minimal loading time even in large game projects.

Download Now

Try a fully functional trial of Visual Assist for 30 days. No reinstallation or reconﬁguration is required if you purchase.

Turn your vision into reality with tailored support for Unreal Engine

Understand code easily

VA’s parser fully understands the context of Unreal extended code language and adjusts syntax highlighting and indentation accordingly. Annoying tabs, false errors, and unlabeled symbols when declaring UFUNCTIONS and UCLASS are now history.

Get Relevant Hints

Type specifiers rapidly and with less switching to documentation for most U*Macros. If you modify the engine or add new specifiers, Visual Assist will detect and add suggestions for those as well.

Works With Everything Else

Visual Assist reads U*Macro specifiers & we’ve used that to make our features smarter. Goto, Goto Related, Find References, Rename & Change Signature have all been extended to support implicit methods.

Go Beyond Limits

One of the limitations of Visual Studio’s default parser is it struggles in large solutions commonly associated with game development. With Visual Assist, you can code without all the incorrect red squiggles & save memory for other tasks.

Context-Aware Dialogs and Documentation

The documentation for Unreal Engine C++ is often in the code itself. Visual Assist understands Unreal’s extended code language so it will show comments and dialogs from base classes and U*Macro specifiers.

Learn More

Visual Assist features

Visual Assist has a number of general C++ features that are also useful for game development.

Open and search files (Shift + Alt + O)

Instead of opening the file explorer, VA lists all the projects in the solution in a single dialog menu. It is powered by a powerful context-aware search function so you can even find associated files by merely typing in a related file or string— an extremely useful feature for game projects.

Learn More

Find Symbols (Shift + Alt + S)

Easily sort through thousands of symbols with advanced filtering and sorting: from variables, class, or structs or in a solution. From this dialog, you can copy the symbol, jump to it, or even find all references to it.

Learn More

List methods in file (Alt+M)

Navigate the current file from a simple drop-down of classes and methods in it. Filter the list using substrings.

Learn More

Implement Virtual methods (Shift + Alt + Q)

Quickly generate method stubs for methods of an interface or virtual methods of a base class in C++ or C#. This shortcut opens the Quick actions and refactoring menu which provides many context-aware options depending on where the caret is or what is highlighted.

Learn More

Open corresponding file (Alt + O)

This is usually used to quickly switch between header and implementation files. VA’s version gives you a menu when more than one destination is possible.

Learn More

And Many More

Getting Started with Unreal Engine 4/5

Setting Up Visual Assist for Unreal Engine

Intro to Visual Assist for Game Development

Testimonials

Mark T.

Senior Software Engineer

"If I lose my hands I could type with my mouth. Take my VA and I'm done."

It doesn't write the code for me, but it provides the tools for me to write it faster and better. I'm getting to really like the VA Code Inspection and the Extract Method really helps.

2022

Ryan V.

Game Director

"Visual Assist is absolutely essential."

Visual Assist is absolutely needed for professional programming in Visual Studio… The time saved through the use of these very basic things is quite incalculable to the point where there's just no reason for anyone to ever use Visual Studio without Visual Assist.

2022

Anon.

Enterprise Banking Developer

"Great software to code fast!"

I think VA does its core job best! Refactoring of code and which helps me tremendously with my projects. I can code faster and deliver faster. I think I am so addicted to the software that I cannot do without it even one day! And thats true!

2022

Anon.

Unreal Engine Developer

"Visual Assist is an absolute essential when it comes to working with large code bases."

Visual Assist drastically improves upon the built-in Intellisense system provided in Visual Studio. When using Visual Assist, I find that I spend much less time combing through Unreal Engine code as well as my own. The 'Search for Symbol' feature also allows filtering out engine code in order to quickly find symbols within my own code.

2022

Victor I.

C++ Developer

"Good performance on large projects, handy for everyday workflow."

The most performant solution among several alternatives I've tried on a large project.

2022

Saman K.

Animation Artist

"A real assistant."

Fewer errors, less googling, and less confusion. It provides what I expect from a modern IntelliSense.

2022