Disable XAML UI designer

Question

How to disable XAML designer in VS 2011.

I have checked following links possible to default-disable XAML designer in VS 2008?

http://www.dolittle.com/blogs/einar/archive/2008/04/24/quot-disable-quot-xaml-designer-in-visual-studio-2008.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/alexeyzakharov/archive/2010/01/27/disable-visual-studio-xaml-designer-better-way.aspx

Problem with above is that intellisense also goes away with setting different text editor.

Answer 1

For Visual Studio 2012 the Link "user1007074" provided (http://blog.spinthemoose.com/2013/03/24/disable-the-xaml-designer-in-visual-studio/) tells:

In the Tools –> Options menu, open the Text Editor node, then the XAML node, then select the Miscellaneous node; make sure that under the Default View heading there is a checkbox beside Always open documents in full XAML view.

also he suggest

Right-click on any .xaml file in your solution explorer and select Open With…

Choose editor and click "Set as Default". Many Thanks to David Alpert!

In Visual Studio 2015/2017/2019/2022:

• In the Tools -> Options menu, open the XAML Designer node, then uncheck "Enable XAML Designer"

As Mark Bell pointed out, it can be enough to set the Default document view to Source View, and leave XAML Designer enabled.

Answer 2

This applies for VS2012, maybe also other versions:

In VS Installation rename XDesProc.exe to XDesProc.exe.bak

For me it was: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\XDesProc.exe

This way it has the best performance gain. The process won't start and VisualStudio will show an undisturbing exception window instead of the designer.

Answer 3

In Visual Studio 2015 you can completely turn off the XAML designer in:

Tools->Options->XAML Designer\Enable XAML Designer