Subscribe

Highlight Current Line in Visual Studio 2010

I recently ran into a minor problem with my Visual Studio theme - the current line was highlighted and because of that I had quite a hard time reading the code and comments on the specific line.

Since I've been dealing with Visual Studio themes a bit lately, I knew how to change the theme colours, via Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Fonts and Colors. However - there are quite a lot alternatives to go through and it isn't always easy to find which alternative corresponds to what Visual Studio theme setting.

Then I found how you could change the appearance of the current line. This is how:

  1. Find the Current Line (extension) and Current Line Inactive (extension) rows.
  2. Change foreground and background.

This is how it could look:

Example of highlighted current line in Visual Studio

Now, most of the Visual Studio users might not have those rows under Fonts and Colors. This is because the Productivity Power Tools must be installed.

The Productivity Power Tools will not only give you more control over Visual Studio's current line, but much more. If you're a serious Visual Studio developer, install the tools!

(Thanks to Patrik Totero for providing me with the Visual Studio theme)

Comments

1. Dean Justus on Dec 30th, 2010 09:34 PM

Thanks man, really helped me out!

2. Non Intanon on Mar 6th, 2011 09:02 AM

Do you have any idea why my IDE reset my current line back to the original almost everytime i re-open the application? Thanks.

3. Martin Söderlund on Mar 7th, 2011 08:37 AM
Follow on Twitter or visit website.

@Non Intanon:

Try resetting the Visual Studio settings and try again. Tools -> Import and Export Settings and then click Reset all settings.

4. Smad on Jun 8th, 2011 09:34 AM

thanx

5. asdsad on Jul 12th, 2011 12:33 PM

Thank you! The highlighting was driving me crazy.

6. Gene Warner on Sep 14th, 2011 06:27 PM

This might be nice if it didn't cause something in VS2010 to crash on every startup. And besides, all I really want is the ability to highlight the current line the cursor is on.

Write a comment





Or use Twitter to identify


To the top