The SSMS team is excited to share the first preview of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22! Preview releases are our way of getting features into your hands early so we can learn from your feedback while we continue building.
How to get SSMS 22 Preview 1
You can install SSMS 22 Preview from our documentation site. As always, SSMS 22 Preview can be installed side-by-side with earlier versions of SSMS, including SSMS 21, released today.
Full details of all features and fixes are available in our release notes, with known issues documented here.
An important note: the SSIS and GitHub Copilot components are not present in SSMS 22 Preview 1. We're working on making these available in upcoming previews! If you need SSIS functionality like import/export or Maintenance Plans, those are supported in SSMS 21. Read here for more details about how to download and install SSIS in SSMS 21. For more information about GitHub Copilot, please reference Erin's blog.
Using the Visual Studio Installer, you can customize your SSMS 22 Preview 1 installation by adding the workloads you need.
Unified Settings
We’ve introduced a modern Settings experience with:
- Search and filtering to help you quickly find what you need.
- Save options that let you apply settings at the user level, the instance of SSMS, or even scoped to a solution (solution settings override user settings).
- A clean, modern UI that lays the foundation for future settings enhancements.
This feature is still in progress, and we’ll be refining the experience in future previews.
New visual themes
We’ve retired the classic SSMS blue theme – this was a tough decision and we know that some folks have strong feelings about the look of SSMS. However, this was a necessary action since the classic blue theme was a source of accessibility issues. Accessibility is a top priority for us, and this change ensures SSMS continues to be inclusive for all users.
In its place, you’ll find a set of fresh light and dark themes, with full support for customizing fonts, backgrounds, and colors (just like in SSMS 21).
Some of the many new color theme options available in SSMS 22 Preview.
Zooming in the results grid
You can now zoom the results grid, independent of zooming the editor using:
- CTRL + scroll up/down
- Or CTRL + SHIFT + < / >
Fabric integration work
We’re continuing to make SSMS a great companion for Fabric. In this preview you’ll find:
- Group by schema support for SQL databases in Fabric
- Updated right-click menus for smoother workflows
More Fabric integration is coming in future previews – stay tuned!
IntelliSense updates
We’ve made IntelliSense improvements with support for:
- New syntax (AI_GENERATE_EMBEDDINGS and CURRENT_TIMEZONE_ID)
- RegEx support (regexp_matches and regexp_split_to_table)
- ANSI concatenation using the ||= operator
General UI fixes
We’ve resolved several long-standing UI issues, including fixing dialogs that sometimes popped up behind the main window instead of on top.
What's next?
Coming in future previews, we’re planning support for:
- Windows ARM64
- GitHub Copilot integration (read more in Erin’s blog post)
- Fabric integration in the Connection Dialog
- More SQL Server 2025 features
You can track our progress on the SSMS roadmap.
Your voice matters!
Previews are all about learning from the community, and we’d love your input. You can share feedback directly from SSMS (Help > Send Feedback > Report a Problem / Suggest a Feature), or head to https://aka.ms/ssms-feedback. Pro tip: leaving feedback from inside SSMS automatically includes helpful details like your SSMS version number and OS info, which makes it easier for us to troubleshoot.
We’re thrilled to start this journey toward SSMS 22 with you. Please try out Preview 1, let us know what works, what doesn’t, and what you’d love to see next!
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