Tips for decluttering Visual Studio 2010
Mogens Heller Grabe wrote a nice post about reducing the amount of clutter in your Visual Studio the other day - and I thought I'd chime in with a few tips.
Hiding the Navigation bar
First up we have the navigation bar - which is taking up a line of your precious screen estate.
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To remove it, jump to:
Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> All Languages
Uncheck ‘Navigation bar'. For extra bonus points, check ‘Line numbers'.
Bringing back the Configuration Manager
The following tip I got from Rasmus Wulff Jensen when I mentioned that the only thing I really like from the standard Visual Studio toolbars is the ‘Configuration Manager' drop down that allows me to switch between Debug and Release builds. He showed me a neat trick to put it in the top toolbar.
Right click on the tool bar to bring up the tool bar selection.
![](/image_thumb_3.png)
Choose ‘Customize'. Change the tab to ‘Commands' and move focus to the bottom of the list, like so:
![](/image_thumb_4.png)
The hit the ‘Add Command' button and go to the ‘Build' category. Scrolling to the bottom, you will find a command labeled ‘Solution Configurations'. Pick it.
![](/image_thumb_5.png)
You now have an inline configuration manager on your top toolbar without taking up extra space. Same trick can be applied to any other commands.
![](/image_thumb_6.png)
Docking the Find dialog box
The ‘Find and Replace' dialog is probably one of the most used dialogs in Visual Studio - however with the default settings, you get a floating dialog that doesn't seem to want to go away after you're done using it.
![](/image_thumb_7.png)
If you dock it - like so:
![](/image_thumb_8.png)
... and unpin it, it will behave nicely and disappear when you're done searching or press ESC.
Switch to a dark theme
This is more a matter of taste. Personally I've been using dark themes for Visual Studio forever. My eyes feel way more relaxed after a day of using a dark theme. My theory is that since computer monitors use additive colors (with white being a full blast mix of red, green and blue and black being no light), a dark theme simply emits way less light.
![](/image_thumb_9.png)
If you want, you can download my personal theme here (ReSharper specific). It's the same as I've previously posted, except I've adjusted it to work properly with Razor views too.