What is it?

Visual Studio Live Share is like Google Docs for Programming. You can use it in Visual Studio and VS Code.

It allows you to share your folder, project or solution with one or more people. They are then able to see your cursor position on their screen and also edit files.

It is a way to do remote pair programming or even mob programming without the need to take control of someone's machine, you can just share the project you are working on.

Ok I'm sold, how do I set it up?

1. Make sure your version of Visual Studio is at least version 15.6 or higher. 15.7+ is recommended. To update Visual Studio, go to Tools Extensions and Updates.

2. Download the VS Live Share extension. It's currently in Preview at the time of writing this article.

3. Make sure you are signed in to Visual Studio or VS Code

4. Open a project, folder or solution in Visual Studio or VS Code

5. Click the Share button in the top right corner to generate a share link. It should be copied to your clipboard automatically. If a firewall window pops up, allow access.

6. Send the link to someone who has VS Live Share setup on their machine.

7. The other person just needs to click the link, choose the program to open it with e.g. Visual Studio or VS Code.

They should be able to start sharing with you. If they have problems sharing, it might be because their firewall is blocking it. Get them to open a folder or project and click on share to prompt the firewall window and then click on allow access. Then get them to end their share session and click on your link again.

That's it

Once you have everything installed and set up it's really easy to do a Live Share. I can't wait to do some pair programming and help out some colleagues or codeshare.co.uk readers with any issues.