Reputation: 24729

How do I cancel a build that is in progress in Visual Studio?

Almost unconsciously I hit the keyboard build macro that builds my entire solution. This can happen just as I notice a code change. The build dominates my computer, and I basically have to wait till it finishes. 10 seconds!

How can I cancel a build?

Upvotes: 337

Answers (15)

MCS

Reputation: 1

Ctrl + Shift + Pause/Break

I am using Visual Studio Community 2022

Upvotes: 0

trinalbadger587

Reputation: 2109

If you do not have a break key on your keyboard, you can change the keyboard shortcut to cancel the build.

Just search hotkeys in the search menu. This should take you to Environment > Keyboard. From there, search for Build.Cancel and you can change it to whatever keyboard shortcut ( eg. Ctrl+Alt+End ). This is a good keyboard shortcut because it won't conflict with other uses of Ctrl+End or Ctrl+Shift+End .

Upvotes: 1

darmis

Reputation: 3301

Go to Visual Studio Build Menu -> cancel build , easy :)

Upvotes: 216

Skeird

Reputation: 301

For users of Lenovo Thinkpad T470s like me, you can simulate the break key by hitting Ctrl+Fn+P, which cancels the build.

Upvotes: 1

Adam Seabridge

Reputation: 2044

If all else fails go to task manager and kill the msbuild task under Visual Studio 2017

Upvotes: 15

Frederik.L

Reputation: 5620

I was hit by an unresponsive build and absolutely nothing would allow me to either kill or cancel the build. Even trying to end the task would trigger a user input window, saying that it could not be ended while the build is still going on (quite ironic because that was precisely the intention, to leave that broken state).

The build was taken care of by MSBuild, so the one way I found is to end its task. When forcing MSBuild.exe to end, VS will wake up and finally see the build as cancelled, allowing you to work again.

Hope this helps someone in the same situation.

Upvotes: 3

Isaac Adams

Reputation: 160

The "pause" command was a function button underneath my right shift key, so the below combination of keys did the trick for me.

Ctrl + Fn + Shift

Upvotes: 2

Ray Koren

Reputation: 864

Go to the Window menu and choose "Web Publish Activity" There will be a cancel button. Cancel button on "Web Publish Activity" tab

Upvotes: 1

Thanh

Reputation: 39

I'm using Visual Studio 2015. To stop build you can follow:

Ctrl + Pause
Ctrl + Break

Upvotes: 2

jacobsgriffith

Reputation: 1476

The build context menu has a Cancel build in Visual Studio 2013.

Upvotes: 1

Mark Holten

Reputation: 141

Ctrl + Break works, but only if the Build window is active. Also, interrupting the build will sometimes leave a corrupted .obj file that will have to be manually deleted in order for the build to proceed.

Upvotes: 9

Valamas

Reputation: 24729

This is crude, but it works well. The Visual Studio on one of my projects (I turn MVC view building on to catch markup errors), well, the project becomes unresponsive while building. I can't cancel the build using the keyboard shortcuts.

So I made this batch file that sits on my quick launch task bar.

@echo off
echo KILL BILLd
for /L %%i in (1,1,10) do (
   Taskkill /IM aspnet_compiler.exe /F
   timeout 1
)

I also made the batch file launch minimized. The build stops and Visual Studio just throws in the error window that there was a problem building.

Upvotes: 20

Iyyappan Amirthalingam

Reputation: 324

Visual Studio 2015 Professional Update 3

If you are using Mac you can do following

Click Build --> Cancel from the Visual Studio Menu

Select Azure App Service Activity window --> Cancel it will cancel the publish activity.

Upvotes: 4

kgsmith

Reputation: 31

Ctrl + End works for me on Visual C++ 2010 Express.

Upvotes: 3

Chris Subagio

Reputation: 6329

You can hit Ctrl+Break on the keyboard to cancel/stop a build that is currently in progress.

Upvotes: 561

How do I cancel a build that is in progress in Visual Studio?

Answers (15)

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