Visual Studio Intellisense

| Posted on by



19 April 2020: We’ve updated this article with a contributed solution from one of our readers in the comments section.

One of the biggest perks of using Microsoft’s Visual Studio to write your Unity scripts is IntelliSense — a code completion aid in Visual Studio that offers suggestions as you write your code, and contextually presents you with information about classes, properties and methods that you are working with.

Given Unity’s enormous scripting API, IntelliSense is a tremendously helpful feature, especially for coders who are beginning their foray into developing games and software with Unity; and while we’d love to say that IntelliSense is automatically set up and linked to Unity’s API when you install it with the Unity Editor, sometimes that’s just not the case. So, if you’ve got both Unity and Visual Studio set up, but find that IntelliSense is still not offering Unity API suggestions, then this guide is for you.

VS Code only supports a limited set of project types (primarily.NET Core). For full.NET project support, we suggest you use Visual Studio Community. IntelliSense is not working. This is typically as a result of the current project type not being supported. You can see an indication in the OmniSharp flame in the bottom left hand side of the. Extension for Visual Studio - Provide IntelliSense completions not only for imported types, but for all available in current solution and referenced assemblies. Project Description This a simple visual studio extension working with ptvs (After Install this extension, the intellisense box will automatically show after you input a English character, just like c#.

There can be many reasons why IntelliSense is failing to work properly on your device, and we are assuming that you’ve already scoured the Internet a fair bit before stumbling on our article. Hence, we’ve put together a table of contents of sorts below, so if you’ve already tried some of the solutions we have, you can skip right through them.

Intellisense
  1. Getting IntelliSense working

Article continues after the advertisement:

Welcome to Planner 5D An easy-to-use home builder that uses drag-and-drops functions. Build walls, drop furniture, edit sizes and colors, add design details and more. When you’re finished, you can create a realistic rendering of your interior and exterior! Create home design and interior decor in 2D & 3D without any special skills. Simple 3D floor planner for interior design used already by 65 335 454 homeowners. Start from scratch. Recognize Plan from Image. Upload picture with plan. Home Design Software & Interior Design Tool ONLINE for home & floor plans in 2D & 3D. Use Planner 5D for your interior design needs without any professional skills. HD Vizualizations. Use the Snapshots feature to capture your design as a realistic image - this adds shadows, lighting and rich colors to make your work look like a photograph! 5d planner home design tool. Planner 5D is an easy-to-use home design software for model building that will help you correctly arrange all the elements you need for your home. Try different textures, furniture, and design ideas within one program, play with colors and floor plans – everything is possible with Planner 5D. Description Whether you’re remodeling, renovating, or designing your dream home, Planner 5D has you covered! Create detailed 2D & 3D floor plans, browse a 3000+ item catalog, and create photo-realistic images of your projects. With over 800K downloads in the app store, Planner 5D makes interior design.

1. Is my IntelliSense not working?

For IntelliSense to detect and work with Unity’s API, Visual Studio needs to:

  1. Be linked to the Unity Editor, and;
  2. Have the appropriate extensions installed (read further to find out what they are)

If you’ve installed Visual Studio via Unity Hub, this can have been automatically set up, but not always. Due to the bevy of ways which you can install Unity and Visual Studio, misconfigurations can happen, and you might end up with Visual Studio not integrating itself into Unity, and an IntelliSense feature that is not properly linked to Unity’s API.

We’ve found that, when installing some versions of Unity 2019 and 2020, Visual Studio does not always integrate with Unity’s API by default. So if things are not working properly, it might not be caused by misconfiguration on your end.

To check if IntelliSense is properly set up, open any script from the Unity Editor, and look out for 2 things:

  1. Whether the top-left dropdown says Miscellaneous Files. If it does, then IntelliSense is not set up.
  2. Try declaring a Unity variable, like a GameObject. If IntelliSense is properly set up, Visual Studio should have an auto-complete suggestion for you before you finish typing.

2. Getting IntelliSense working

So if IntelliSense isn’t working for you, what should you do?

a. Open your scripts from Unity

Before you try anything else from here, first make sure that your scripts are opened from within Unity, i.e. whenever you want to edit your scripts, double-click on them in the Unity Editor so that Visual Studio is opened by Unity.

If IntelliSense still doesn’t work when you do this, then continue onto the steps below:

b. Setting Unity’s External Script Editor

From the Unity Editor, access the Preferences window from Edit > Preferences. Then, click on the External Tools tab.

Set the External Script Editor to the version of Visual Studio that you installed alongside Unity. Then, restart Visual Studio and see if IntelliSense now works. If it still doesn’t, then you might be missing…

If Visual Studio doesn’t appear on the dropdown, you will have to use the Browse… option (pictured above) to find it. It’s typically under C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio2019CommunityCommon7IDEdevenv.exe for Windows devices.

Article continues after the advertisement:

c. Visual Studio Tools for Unity

Visual Studio Intellisense Not Working

To install this, open Visual Studio and go to Tools > Get Tools and Features.

Note: You’ll need administrator permissions to open this window, as it makes changes to the Visual Studio installation on your computer.

Once the installer is open, go to Workloads and find Game development with Unity. Check the box, and then click on the Modify button on the bottom-right corner to begin installation.

A popup may ask you to close certain processes before beginning installation. If this happens, close your Visual Studio project and the Unity Editor application.

When installation completes, restart both Unity and Visual Studio, then check to see if IntelliSense now works.

The Games development with Unity workload actually installs 2 additional Visual Studio components — Visual Studio Tools for Unity and C# and Visual Basic. You can install both modules individually by going to the Individual components tab, and checking both components in the list that is shown.

Visual Studio Intellisense

Article continues after the advertisement:

d. Check your .NET API compatibility level

If IntelliSense still refuses to work, you can open the Unity Editor and head to Edit > Project Settings and access the Player (or Player Settings) tab. Scroll down to the Other Settings sub-tab, and find the Api Compatibility Level dropdown under the Configuration heading.

Visual Studio Intellisense Icons

You want to set the Api Compatibility Level to a different option, and see which is the one that works for your device.

e. Regenerating your Unity project files

If the above solutions we’ve proposed did not work for you, you can also try this solution from one of our comment contributions.

Note: Back up your Unity project before trying this, as we are deleting some essential project files and letting Unity regenerate them.

Visual Studio Code Intellisense

  1. Close both Visual Studio and Unity on your device.
  2. Remove all .sln and .csproj files in your Unity project folder.
  3. Remove the .vs and Library folders in your Unity project folder.
  4. Re-open the project in Unity, then go to Assets > Open C# Project to open Visual Studio.

Visual Studio Intellisense Broken

3. Conclusion

As with the other articles on the blog, we’d love if you leave a comment below, especially if you:

  1. Find any errors in this article, or;
  2. Find an IntelliSense fix that is not listed in this article

Your comments will add on to the information that is already here, and help other future readers!

Unity Visual Studio Intellisense Not Working

Article continues after the advertisement: