To install Visual Studio on a machine without internet access, navigate to your offline layout folder on the target machine.

There are several benefits to using an offline installer for Visual Studio Community Edition:

vs_community.exe --layout D:\VS2022_Offline --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktop --includeRecommended --lang en-US

to a convenient location on your local drive, for example C:\Downloads\vs_community.exe .

. However, user reviews and technical assessments highlight that the offline installer experience is powerful but notoriously difficult to manage. Offline Installer: The Good & The Bad

Future research can focus on improving the offline installer, such as reducing the file size, improving component selection, and enhancing the installation process. Additionally, researchers can explore the use of offline installers for other software applications, which can benefit developers in areas with limited internet connectivity.

While Microsoft does not provide a ready‑made offline installer for Visual Studio Community, creating one is straightforward using the bootstrapper's --layout command. With a little preparation on a connected machine, you can prepare a customised offline package tailored precisely to your workloads—saving time, bandwidth, and frustration.

Visual Studio contains dozens of gigabytes of files. You can choose to download the entire IDE suite or only the specific workloads you need. Option A: Download Specific Workloads (Recommended)

Open or PowerShell as an Administrator, navigate to your downloads folder, and execute one of the following commands based on your strategy. Command for a Complete Layout