Customizing the Start Page for Visual Studio

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Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

You can customize the start page for Visual Studio in several default ways, such as showing the Open Project dialog box or opening the solution that was loaded most recently. You can also show a custom start page, which is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) XAML page that runs in a tool window and can run commands that are internal to Visual Studio.

Customizing the default start page

  1. On the menu bar, choose Tools, Options.

  2. Expand Environment, and then choose Startup.

  3. In the At startup list, choose the item for the customization that you want.

Show a custom start page

  1. Install a custom start page in one of the following ways:

    • Install it from the Visual Studio Marketplace, another website, or a page on your local intranet.

      Note

      If you like a page that's targeted for an earlier version of Visual Studio, you can upgrade the page by using the Visual Studio SDK. See How to: Upgrade a Visual Studio Custom Start Page.

      Open a .vsix file that contains a custom start page, or copy and paste the start-page files into the %USERPROFILE% \My Documents\Visual Studio 2015\StartPages folder on your computer.

    • Create your own start page if you've installed the Visual Studio SDK.

      See Creating Your Own Start Page.

  2. On the menu bar, choose Tools, Options.

  3. Expand Environment, and then choose Startup.

  4. In the Customize Start Page list, choose the page that you want.

Note

If an error in a custom start page causes Visual Studio to crash, you can start Visual Studio in safe mode and then set it to use the default start page. See /SafeMode (devenv.exe).

See Also

Customizing Development Settings in Visual Studio Creating Your Own Start Page