The Visual Studio update will be distributed in conjunction with the monthly Windows Update – Window Forest

Microsoft announced on June 19 (local time) that it will begin distributing updates to Visual Studio via Microsoft Update. Starting in August 2024, this will be implemented for developers who do not belong to organizations managed by IT administrators.

Windows Update, which is held on the second Tuesday of every month in the United States, only distributes security updates for the operating system, but if you turn on the “Receive updates for other Microsoft products” toggle on the Advanced options screen, you can receive patches. Security for Microsoft products like Office at the same time. This is Microsoft Update, and although it's disabled by default, it's a feature you should definitely take advantage of.

Microsoft Update toggle switch.

The versions of Visual Studio for which Microsoft Update is available are as follows.

• Visual Studio 2022
• Visual Studio 2019
• Visual Studio 2017

However, please note that this does not apply to the preview channel. Additionally, if the toggle switch for “Microsoft Update” is grayed out and you can't turn it on, you won't be able to use it because your organization's administrator has blocked “Microsoft Update” in the update policy.

If Visual Studio security patches are distributed and applied through Microsoft Update, there is no need to bother checking for updates, and the risk of forgetting to update and leaving Visual Studio vulnerabilities unattended also disappears. The update process will not interrupt the work. If you restart the operating system to apply the patch, the Visual Studio patch will also be applied and this will be noted in your Windows Update log.

As mentioned above, this change will take effect from August 2024, but if you want to try it out next month, you can participate in the preview program by setting the registration key below.

[HKLMSoftware@Policies@Microsoft@VisualStudio@Setup] "PreviewAutomaticUpdates"=dword:1

This key will no longer be needed in August 2024.

If you want to opt out (opt out) of Visual Studio updates by Microsoft Update after August 2024, you can set the following registry key.

[HKLMSoftware¥Policies¥Microsoft¥VisualStudio¥Setup] "VSthroughMUUpdatesOptOut"=dword:1

If you want to manage Visual Studio releases yourself, you can leave Microsoft Update disabled or set this registry key to update manually.