Microsoft has revealed that Visual Studio 2022 17.4, which came out earlier this week, allows you to roll back to an old version if you’re encountering any issues. This update has been requested since November 2018 and has 438 upvotes in Microsoft’s Developer Community, now the feature is available.
Rolling back to a previous version of Visual Studio is pretty straightforward. Using the Visual Studio Installer, press the More button on the relevant product card and look for the ‘Rollback to previous version’ option. When you press that, you’ll see a pop-up warning you that you’re about to rollback Visual Studio, you can either proceed or cancel the process.
If you’re on the Release channel, you can roll back to your previously installed version if it was either 17.0.10 or higher, or 17.1.7 or higher. If you’re on the Preview channel, you can roll back to 17.2 Preview 1 or higher. You should note that any security updates you’ve installed will be removed as part of this process, so think carefully about whether you really need to roll back. Microsoft always recommends updating back to the latest version to stay secure.
As it’s a new feature, Microsoft says it wants your feedback if you decide to try it out. You can share your feedback through Developer Community.