Visual Studio 2022 17.13.1 Broke My Syntax Highlighting

Posted by Dylan Beattie on 24 February 2025 • permalink

Another day, another software update that breaks something you can’t quite believe anybody’s still messing around with… but hey, even here in 2025 I guess somebody at the Visual Studio team is looking at syntax highlighting and going “yeah, we could improve that”.

Here’s a snippet of code from the workshop I’m writing, that I snapped a few days ago. This is Visual Studio 2022 Professional, version 17.12.3, with a slightly modified version of h4zm1’s awesome Cyberpunk theme (GitHub) (VS Marketplace):

A screenshot of some C# code in Visual Studio 2022, with a synthwave colour scheme applied.

And here’s that same snippet of code when I opened it up this morning, after installing the latest update to VS 2022 17.13.1:

A screenshot of some C# code in Visual Studio 2022, with a synthwave colour scheme applied. Several code elements are rendered in a muted color, indicating they are unused - but they ARE used. Stupid computer.

You see how the constructor parameters aren’t hot pink any more, they’re a sort of muted navy blue? And GetWebsiteBaseUri has gone from being Sunny Delight to being a colour I think we will call “crusty mustard”?

Yeah. That’s a problem. Those muted colours, that’s Visual Studio’s way of saying “hey… this thing isn’t actually being used; maybe we can remove it?” - except those bits of code absolutely are being used.

Tried the usual things. Restarted VS2022. Updated Resharper. Restarted the computer. Nope. Eventually had to revert the update - which, of course, clobbered the colour theme installation - but eventually I managed to get VS downgraded back to 17.12.3, get the color scheme reinstalled, and generally get things looking the way they’re supposed to. There’s 90 minutes of my life I’m never getting back.

Why does it matter? I’m halfway through making a training course. Lots of video. Lots of recording screens of code. So I guess we add another rule to the rulebook: don’t update Visual Studio when you’re in the middle of a video project.

I’ve filed a feedback issue with the VS team here:

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/VS2022-17131-update-has-incorrect-synt/10856882

  • if you end up on this post searching for the same problem, go give it an upvote 😉