Intellisense Not Working with Visual Studio (Fix)

Likely, if you have appeared here to this page you are having the problem I had for the past hour or so. Intellisense is not working in Visual Studio. Well lucky for you, I figured out the solution to fix this issue after searching the entire web. So you don’t have to search the web anymore, I will tell you how I fixed the issue.

Step 1:
Close Visual Studio

Step 2:
In Unity, go to Edit < Preferences < External Tools (left part of the Window)

Step 3:
In External Tools go to the part that says External Script Editor (this should be on which ever Visual Studio editor you are using (for me it defaulted to “Open by File Extension”

Step 4:
Make sure Generate all csproj files is checked, and Editor Attaching is checked

Step 5:
Open the C# script you were trying to open earlier

Hope this Helps

Currently using

  • Unity 2019.3.3f1 Personal
  • Visual Studio 2019
680 Likes

It worked as you stated. Thank you!!

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It worked! Thank you.

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I need “Generate all csproj files”. Thanks!

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Had this problem installing a fresh version with ‘2019.3.10f1’ following this advice solved the problem. Thanks DavidG_Fenex much appreciated.

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MANY THANKS

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Solved my problem perfectly, thank you!

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Thank you for this time save. It worked perfectly.

2 Likes

Thanks, that worked! I’m on Mac, too.

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Thank you so much for writing this up. This worked perfectly for me.

Many thanks to you!

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Dude, it actually worked! Thanks!

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That didn’t work for me… :frowning:

I already had Visual Studio Code selected as script editor.
I didn’t have any checkboxes selected under “Generate .csproj files for:”
I added the checkboxes to all of them, but it had no impact when I reopened a script through Unity.

Unity recognizes that Visual Studio Code is my External Script Editor, but intellisense in Vis Studio Code still does not recognize or provide autocomplete for Unity namespace items.

Edit: After a bit of searching I found the solution!

In addition to the steps listed above in this thread, there is also a Visual Studio marketplace addon that I had to install! Install the following free addon extensions from Visual Studio Marketplace. I would’ve provided links but the Unity Forum marks it as spam.

Debugger for Unity by Unity Technologies
For me, the Unity Debugger finally fixed it!

Two additional optional Unity tools to consider installing:
Unity Tools by Tobiah Zarlez
Unity Code Snippets by Kleber Silva

I installed all of the above, and I’m happy now! :slight_smile:

In my case, I just installed Unity and Visual Studio Code for the first time a few days ago and I just didn’t know about the extra Unity extensions that I REALLY needed.

22 Likes

(sorry for my english) i have been searching for this like 2 weeks, my computer for some reason keep running visual studio 2010 powershell and keep asking to reinstall which i didn’t even have it on my computer, your solution works perfectly, thank you so much

I seem to run into this issue more times than I’d like to recall. That said, I just upgraded to version 2019.3.14f1 and ran into this again under Visual Code.

FWIW, I actually have the market place addons installed already as mentioned by @SpinJack . So at least for me that wasn’t gonna help.

What did work for me was simply this:
Edit > Preferences > External Tools > Regenerate project files

Problem solved.

34 Likes

THANK YOU!

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I tried all the above tricks but still nothing goes right. And by the way I’m using vscode.
Please help me through this

me too, nothing brings intelli back

If you’re using Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac with Unity 2020 and have issue like this, please try updating the Visual Studio package to version 2.0.2, which was just released. It fixes a known issue that would cause problems like mentioned here.

You can update the package via Unity (2020+) > Windows > Package Manager, then select Visual Studio Editor and click the Update button.

If you’re using Unity 2020 with the Visual Studio Editor 2.0.2 package or Unity 2019 and still experience these issue, please let us know via the Help > Report a Problem menu from Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac. That will let you file an issue on Microsoft Developer Community.

18 Likes

Oh my gosh you’re a lifesaver! This worked for me on VS Code (mac). I uninstalled the C# extension, did the suggestions and then through unity opened the project back up, reinstalled the C# extension and now it’s working. Thanks a bundle!