Visual Studio - better indication of build status

Question

When I do builds in Visual studio, it would be great to have a better indicator that the build is done.

Sometimes I navigate away from VS while it is building and I have to switch between VS and another window to find out if VS finished building.

Are there ways to make the "build is done" status more obvious? Play a sound or something else?

Answer 1

You can use Growl for windows to hook up to Visual Studio.

Set it up with the visual studio plugin (found here), and you will have very clear indication of build success/failure.

Notifications show up like this:

Answer 2

If you use the Sounds control panel applet, you'll find that there is a section for Visual Studio. "Build Success" is one of the sounds.

I prefer "Windows Print Complete", which gives a nice "cheery" sound. I use "Windows Hardware Fail" for build failure. It really sounds like something is badly wrong.