Visual-Studio Output window events time

Question

When i use Trace methods (.NET) to see what happening in my code i need to add time to output string in most cases. Thats allow me to see when actually output string was printed. Is there any way to customize IDE (probably, some options or extensions) so time will be added automatically?

Answer 1

There is a set of Visual Studio extensions called Productivity Power Tools available for VS2010 right the way to VS2017. One of the features from 2013 onwards is "Timestamp Margin" which adds a timestamp at the start of each line in the Debug Output Window only. Features in the extension can be enabled individually.

If you're using VS2017, there is also a much more lightweight, standalone extension with just the one feature.

Finally, there is also a much fancier extension called VSColorOutput which colour codes the Debug Output Window based on regular expressions. Optionally it will add timestamps as well.

At the time of writing all of these options work only on the Debug output.

I know this question is tagged with VS2010 but I think anyone reading this still using that version will be in the minority.