Last Updated on October 12, 2021 by Mathew Diekhake

Microsoft has released the next major release of the the .NET framework, .NET 5.0.

Microsoft is frequently releasing preview builds of .NET framework. In the leadup to .NET 5.0’s release, there were eight preview builds. The eighth and final preview build, which was available during late August, had nearly all features in their final form. Over the  last few months Microsoft has verified that many companies, including active teams within their own, have been using .NET 5.0 and they’re confident it is ready for a public release.

.NET 5.0 should improve a lot of your time with the .NET framework going forward. You can now use single file applications, Json serialization usability to Arm64 enablement, and plenty of performance improvements.

The ClickOnce app is now supported by .NET 5.0 Windows apps. ClickOnce has already been available for .NET Core and Visual Studio. Microsoft knew that Visual Studio users in particular would love being able to use ClickOnce in .NET 5.0 so Microsoft wanted to give those already familiar with Visual Studio a familiar look and feel. Microsoft feels they have done that with this release and you can get a feel for what I mean from some of the screenshots below.

You can easily install the .NET Desktop Runtime. The ClickOnce installer will install .NET runtime on a computer if it is needed.

You can still use ClickOnce offline and updating features.

Mage has been changed so that it is now a .NET tool. This means you can install the NET 5.0 SDK and then the option to install Mage as a .NET tool will be available, making for an easier installation.

The following is the Mage installation command:

dotnet tool install -g Microsoft.DotNet.Mage

Users will be shown an update dialog, like the one that follows, whenever you make updates available.

You can download the .NET 5.0 SDK for Windows from the links below.

Build apps SDK: SDK 5.0.100

Windows Installers: Arm64 | x64 | x86

Windows Binaries: Arm64 | x64 | x86

You can read more on the final preview build, .NET 5.0 Preview 8, from Microsoft here: Announcing .NET 5.0 Preview 8

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