On Day one of Microsoft’s Build 2017 conference, finally it was announced that Visual Studio is officially available for download on Mac devices and is out of preview. A rejoicing wave spread among the developers after getting this much awaited news. The coding tool was first released in beta preview back in November of last year.

About a couple later than its release on Windows earlier this year, the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) has been made available on Mac. This falls in the line with the company’s announcement for the release date, which had been set towards the end of April, to match with the conference. This release is aimed at making Microsoft’s developer tools easily accessible to all, without the dependency of any platform.

Visual Studio for Mac brings the developer productivity you love to the Mac. The experience has been diligently build to optimize the developer workflow for the Mac.

This is the first time Microsoft’s flagship coding tool has made its way across and into Apple’s territory. The support for Visual Studio 2017 on MacOS has been made possible by leveraging and optimizing its cross-platform developer service Xamarin, which it acquired last year. This now allows developers to build apps on the platform without having to worry about switching workstations — between one that’s Windows or MacOS.

Microsoft in a statement noted earlier, informing about the release,

Sporting a native user interface, Visual Studio for Mac integrates all of the tools you need to create, debug, test, and publish mobile and server applications without compromise that includes the state of art APIs and Android and iOS UI designers.

Much like the usual functionality of the IDE, the Mac version also brings along collaboration tools — for efficient code management via access to Git repositories, Xamarin’s advanced debugging and profiling tools, and build apps for any platform- Windows, Android, iOS and MacOS. And as announced on stage, all Azure cloud upgrades will also be made available to Visual Studio 2017 users across all platforms.

If you’re a Mac user and had already been running the preview build of Visual Studio 2017 then you will soon be able to upgrade your IDE to the general release candidate. And if not, then head over here to download the IDE right away — where Microsoft is offering a developer access to free, extended 60-day trial of Xamarin University. It includes live online classes on how to get coding with Visual Studio for Mac.

Also Read: Visual Studio 15 vs 17