Colorize Your Visual Studio Output Window for Better Readability!
Magic Output automatically adds color highlighting to the Visual Studio Output window, making it easier to spot errors, warnings, and important messages at a glance.
- 🔴 Errors - Bright red highlighting for errors, exceptions, and failures
- 🟠 Warnings - Orange highlighting for warnings and deprecated items
- 🟢 Success - Green highlighting for successful operations and completions
- 🔵 Info - Blue highlighting for informational messages
- ⚪ Debug - Gray highlighting for debug and verbose output
- 🟣 Trace - Purple highlighting for trace messages
- Open Visual Studio
- Go to Extensions → Manage Extensions
- Search for "Magic Output"
- Click Download and restart Visual Studio
- Download the latest
.vsixfile from Releases - Close all Visual Studio instances
- Double-click the
.vsixfile - Follow the installation wizard
- Restart Visual Studio
Zero configuration required! Magic Output works automatically once installed.
- Open any project in Visual Studio
- Build your project or run any command that generates output
- Open the Output window (View → Output or
Ctrl+Alt+O) - Watch as your output messages are automatically colorized!
Magic Output intelligently recognizes patterns in your output:
| Pattern | Color | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Error | Red | error, exception, failed, failure, fatal, critical |
| Warning | Orange | warning, warn, caution, deprecated |
| Success | Green | success, succeeded, completed, passed, done, OK |
| Info | Blue | info, information, note, starting, building |
| Debug | Gray | debug, verbose |
| Trace | Purple | trace, tracing |
- ✅ Visual Studio 2026
- ✅ Visual Studio 2022 (17.x)
Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:
- Fork the repository
- Create a feature branch (
git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature) - Commit your changes (
git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature') - Push to the branch (
git push origin feature/AmazingFeature) - Open a Pull Request
- Clone the repository
- Open
MagicOutput.slnin Visual Studio - Ensure you have Visual Studio Extension Development workload installed
- Build the solution
- Press
F5to debug (opens experimental VS instance)
- Some third-party extensions may conflict with output colorization
- Very large output windows (10,000+ lines) may experience slight lag
Report issues at: GitHub Issues
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
- Inspired by Output Enhancer and similar productivity tools
- Built with the Visual Studio Extensibility SDK
- Thanks to all contributors and users!
Made with ❤️ for Visual Studio developers
If you find Magic Output useful, please ⭐ star the repository and leave a review on the Visual Studio Marketplace!