Choosing an IDE for UE5 Development
Personally I use Rider as my IDE. Visual Studio 2022 also works.
If you prefer to use Visual Studio, you should seriously consider purchasing some paid plugins to save yourself insane amounts of time.
Technically you can use VS for free, but doing so is like trying to dig a hole with a wet noodle. It can be done, but it will waste a significant amount of your time. VS really needs paid plugins to be a competitive IDE, which makes it priced similarly to Rider for professional users.
If you’re developing on a Mac, Rider is really your only option. Xcode is just plain bad for UE coding.
Rider also works great on Linux.
Option 1. Visual Studio
⚠️️ UE5 requires VS 2022 to build, even if you are really using VS 2026 or Rider.
From the Visual Studio 2022 Release History, I extracted this link you can use to install the latest VS 2022:
📌 VS 2022 COMMUNITY INSTALLER 📌 https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vs_community.exe
You must install VS 2022 Community in order for UE to build. You don’t have to use VS 2022, you can use VS 2026 or Rider or whatever. You do need VS 2022 installed.
VS Installation and Setup
- Install Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition (see pinned link above)
- Follow the Epic Options for a New Visual Studio Installation
- Epic shows what VS options to install
- ℹ️ Don’t miss the recommended VS Settings
VS Extensions
- [REQUIRED] Install UnrealVS Extension
- Free Visual Studio extension, part of Unreal Engine Binaries; you only need to install it
- (optional) Install VsChromium extension
VS Engine/Game Plugins
- [REQUIRED] Install Unreal Engine plugin for Visual Studio
- I add this into my custom engine, but you can also add it only to a specific game
VS Plugins (required for pro devs)
You don’t need both of these, but you do need one if you value your time at all.
Choose which you prefer:
Either: ✅ ReSharper for VS by JetBrains (gives UE support) (works like Rider)
OR: ❓Visual Assist for VS by Whole Tomato (gives UE support)
Option 2. Rider
Rider is optional, though highly recommended. You have to pay for a license unless you can get a trial or student license. It’s well worth the cost IMO.
Especially if you develop on multiple platforms, Rider works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
If you use this, it replaces VS as the IDE. Under the hood it uses VS build tools. You will also need to have VS installed in order to use Rider. (On Mac, it uses Xcode under the hood, on Linux it uses gcc).
- Install JetBrains Toolbox
- Install Rider 2024.3.6 or later (via Toolbox)
If you find that you sometimes work in VS in addition to Rider (I sometimes do), then with your JetBrains subscription you also get access to ReSharper, so you can also:
- Install ReSharper Tools
ReSharper comes with the Rider subscription so you basically get to use Rider and still upgrade your VS to be good at the same time.