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I am having an issue with Syntax Highlighting disappearing for my XAML Designer in Visual Studio. Last week I installed Visual Studio Enterprise 2026 (was working off of VS Enterprise 2022) before. After the installation and importing all of my settings from VS Enterprise 2022, I had no issue. Then I headed home for the weekend and when I opened up my solution again none of the views I opened in the XAML Designer had Syntax Highlighting.
I am still relatively new to the platform here and am finding my way around, but I've done as thorough a job as I can trying to troubleshoot:
One thing of note that happened before this was that upon reopening these XAML files last week I had to manually set the default editor to the XAML Designer for them to open. However, after that I had no issue.
Would love some assistance here on possible solutions or where else to look to figure this out. Hoping I am just missing something. The project is pretty small right now, but as it grows not having Syntax Highlighting on these views is going to be a real chore navigating.
Thank you!
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I had the same issue, the XAML Designer setting for Default document view doesnt seem to work so i had to do Open With on the file and set the default that way, but then my syntax highlighting went away and the only way to fix it was by repairing visual studio. Now the Default document view is still not working and I'm afraid to mess with the open with settings so i'm stuck with split view i guess...
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It happened to me too bro I repaired the visual studio through the visual studio installer and it fixed it. Please tell me if it worked for you.
I ended up just uninstalling and reinstalling Visual Studio and everything is good now.
First I attempted to reset all of the settings, but I ran into some issues with permissions as I am on a work computer. I tried running on the local admin account, but that just had a new set of settings tied to that user. My local admin account did have syntax highlighting and intellisense working fine which tells me it had to do with the settings tied to my standard user account. I am sure that if I were able to reset those settings or perhaps run that repair on Visual Studio it would have fixed it as well.
Thanks for the response though.
It sounds like you're experiencing an issue with the XAML Designer in Visual Studio Enterprise 2026 where syntax highlighting is not appearing. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and potentially resolve this issue:
Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings. Make sure to back up your current settings if needed.Tools > Options > XAML Designer and verify that the settings are properly configured to enable the designer.If these steps do not resolve the issue, you may want to check the Visual Studio community forums or Microsoft support for further assistance.
References: