IntelliSense for Most Recently Used Members

  • Article

IntelliSense can pre-select the members that you have recently selected in the pop-up List Members box for automatic object name completion, during your current session in the IDE. This enables you to immediately continue on the desired item, and avoid wasting time typing out its name, or browsing through a list of infrequently used members in the List Members box to execute automatic completion.

The history of most recently used members is cleared between each session in the IDE.

Example

This example shows how to use IntelliSense for recently selected members by using the WriteLine method.

Note

Your computer might show different names or locations for some of the Visual Studio user interface elements in the following instructions. The Visual Studio edition that you have and the settings that you use determine these elements. For more information, see Customizing Development Settings in Visual Studio.

To use IntelliSense for MFU members

  1. Create a new console application.

  2. In the Code Editor, type Console.Wr in the Main method.

    The List Members box appears after you type the scope operator (.). IntelliSense automatically selects the first member of the Console class that starts with Wr, which is the Write method.

    Note

    If you do not want to use the default selection and you would instead continue with a different method, such as the WriteLine method, you may continue to type the object name until it is highlighted, press the DOWN ARROW key until the desired member is selected, or use the mouse to select the desired member.

  3. In the List Members box, select the WriteLine method.

  4. Press ENTER, TAB, or ( for automatic object name completion, and then complete the rest of the statement. For example:

    Console.WriteLine("IntelliSense preselected Write.");

  5. Type Console.W in the Code Editor again.

    Because the WriteLine method becomes the most recently used member of the Console class, IntelliSense already selects this method in the pop-up list box.

    Note

    Now you can immediately continue on this method without having to type the rest of its name or browse the List Members box for the WriteLine method.

  6. Press ENTER, and then complete the rest of the statement. For example:

    Console.WriteLine("IntelliSense preselected WriteLine.");

See Also

Reference

Options, Text Editor, C#, IntelliSense

Other Resources

Visual C# IntelliSense