Why doesn't Visual Studio display reference shortcut links for fields?

Question

The Visual Studio IDE will display a shortcut link to view all usages of a class member if that member is a property. However, it does not display them if that member is a field. See screenshot below. Why is this the case? Is there an IDE setting I need to enable to get them to appear for fields?

I'm using Visual Studio 2022 17.9.2 64-bit

Answer 1

I am able to reproduce your situation:

Is there an IDE setting I need to enable to get them to appear for fields?

There is no way to achieve this currently.

The feature you are using is CodeLens.

It actually works for properties but not fields. Starting from VS2013, the VS never support the 'Codelens to view fields references feature' you mentioned.

Take a look of the official reply:

feature request of Visual Studio CodeLens on fields

Due to the underlying architecture of VS, the situation you mentioned cannot actually be displayed currently. You can understand that it is by design. The real CodeLens to view the fields reference does not exist and can only be used through properties.