| title | Explore experimental space in Visual Studio SDK | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| description | Explore how the Visual Studio SDK provides an experimental space to run untested applications in debug mode and safeguard your development environment. | |||
| ms.date | 12/17/2025 | |||
| ms.topic | concept-article | |||
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| author | tinaschrepfer | |||
| ms.author | tinali | |||
| ms.subservice | extensibility-integration |
To safeguard your Visual Studio development environment from untested applications that might change it, the VSSDK provides an experimental space that you can use to experiment. You develop new applications by using Visual Studio as usual, but you run them by using this experimental instance.
Every application that has a VSIX package launches the Visual Studio experimental instance in debug mode.
If you want to start the experimental instance of Visual Studio outside a specific solution, run the following command at the command window:
"<Visual Studio installation path>\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /RootSuffix Exp
Note
The experimental instance is written to the registry under the <version number>Exp and <version number>Exp_Config nodes. For example the Visual Studio 2015 experimental registry area is
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0Exp and HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0Exp_Config
We recommend that you run your extension in the experimental instance while you are developing it. When you deploy the extension, it runs in the development instance. For more information about registering applications, see Registering VSPackages.
:::moniker range="visualstudio"
You can reset or start the experimental instance by using the shortcuts ResetExperimental and StartExperimental in the VSSDK folder (under your Visual Studio installation folder).
In Visual Studio 2026 and later, you can also use commands on the Extensions > Extension Development menu to start or reset the experimental instance.
:::image type="content" source="media/visualstudio/start-reset-experimental-instance.png" alt-text="Screenshot showing menu commands to reset or start the experimental instance of Visual Studio.":::
:::moniker-end