Microsoft recently released a new version of Dev Home, i.e., v0.15; it is available by default and is open source on GitHub.

What’s new?

Improved functionality of Machine configuration tool

The machine configuration tool in Dev Home helps you set up your developer machine instantly; now, with the improvements introduced in v0.15, bring WinGet DSC integration.

This will let you generate a configuration file after going through the setup flow; then, Dev Home will detect the file in a repo after cloning. You will also get new summary and details view when running configuration files.

Furthermore, Quickstart Playground, a new experimental feature is added to the machine configuration tool. It allows you to start a development project using AI quickly.

Different environments to choose

You get different environment types in one place, you can click Create Environment and, create, connect, and configure environments, including  Hyper-V virtual machines and Microsoft Dev Boxes all in one view.

Windows customization

With the Windows customization tool, you can modify additional settings within Windows to get a customized experience. You can tweak File Explorer, alter Dev Drive insights, initiate a quiet background processes session and more.

The Dev Drive insights option offers information on your Dev Drive volumes and suggests increasing performance within them.

The Quiet background processes feature is experimental and, as the name suggests, allows you to start a session with limited background processes, thereby freeing space for development tools.

A session can run up to two hours, and once it ends, you will get an analytic summary of CPU usage. Microsoft mentioned that the Windows customization tool is currently under development, which means we can expect more features in the future.

Utilities

The last tool in Dev Home’s kit is Utilities, which contains additional developer tools for Windows. Registry Editor, Hosts File Editor, Project Ironsides, and Environment Variables Editor are currently available under this category.

However, we can expect more tools to be listed in this area soon. Microsoft also asked users to file a feature request on GitHub if they want any specific tool included.

Project Ironsides is another experimental feature listed under Dev Home’s utilities. It lets you peek into the apps running on your device, monitor their performance, and fix any issues instantly.

You get information like window handle, process ID, and loaded modules list, including crash dumps from Windows Error Reporting (WER), Event Log, and Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). It examines the data for known failure patterns and suggests actions to fix the issues.

Apart from this, the version comes with quality improvements; here is the changelog available on GitHub:

Accessibility fixes

• Narrator should now announce proper content within the Environments flow.
• The Winget configuration and app install flows should be much more accessible now.
• Text in the add widget dialog and environments page should no longer get cut off.
• Narrator should now announce errors in widgets.
• Machine configuration should now be fully navigable with arrow keys.

Changes

• You can now configure the SSH keychain widget with using a file picker, rather than manually typing in the path.
• SSH keychain widget now shows entries with multiple Host aliases
• You can now use the application install flow via a URI protocol, allowing you to programmatically install apps through Dev Home.
• Project Ironsides is now available as an experimental feature, intended to help you identify problems with applications and help provide solutions.
• You should now see an error in Dev Home if an environment fails to be created.

Bug fixes

• Launching a project from Quickstart Playground should no longer launch to a stale project.
• Sentence structure is now more consistent throughout Dev Home
• Environments search area should now be properly vertically aligned
• Dev Home should no longer crash when opening a content dialog at 200% text scaling.

The preview of Microsoft Dev Home 0.15 is available in its GitHub repository. You can also download the app from the Microsoft Store. Alternatively, you can press Windows + X select Windows Terminal from the context menu and use winget install –id Microsoft.DevHome -e command to install the app.

Have you downloaded the new version of Dev Home yet? If so, share your experience with our readers in the comments section below.