ILSpy README

ILSpy

ILSpy is the open-source, cross-platform .NET assembly browser and decompiler. The desktop UI runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS (built on Avalonia).

Download: latest release | latest CI build (master) | Microsoft Store (RTM versions only)

Decompiler Frontends

Aside from the cross-platform desktop UI ILSpy (downloadable via Releases, see also plugins), the following other frontends are available:

Visual Studio 2022/2026 ship with decompilation support for F12 enabled by default (using our engines v8.2 and v9.1 respectively).
Our Visual Studio 2022/2026 extension marketplace
Our Visual Studio Code Extension repository | marketplace | open-vsx
Our dotnet tool for Linux/Mac/Windows - check out ILSpyCmd in this repository | dotnet tool install
C# for Visual Studio Code ships with decompilation support as well. To enable, activate the setting "Enable Decompilation Support".
Our ICSharpCode.Decompiler and ILSpyX NuGet packages for your own projects
Our Linux/Mac/Windows PowerShell cmdlets in this repository

Features

Decompilation to C# (check out the language support status)
Whole-project decompilation
Open from NuGet feed, open from running process in addition to disk and GAC (Windows-only)
Search for types/methods/properties (learn about the options)
Hyperlink-based type/method/property navigation, bookmarks
Base/Derived types navigation, history
Assembly metadata explorer (feature walkthrough)
BAML to XAML decompiler, !AvaloniaResources support
ReadyToRun binary support for .NET Core (see the tutorial)
Extensible via plugins
Additional features in DEBUG builds (for the devs)

License

ILSpy is distributed under the MIT License. Please see the About doc for details, as well as third party notices for included open-source libraries.

How to build

Windows:

Make sure PowerShell 7+ is installed (Windows PowerShell at least version 5.0 works as well)
Clone the ILSpy repository using git.
Execute git submodule update --init --recursive to download the ILSpy-Tests submodule (used by some test cases).
Install Visual Studio (documented version: 18.0/2026). You need the following workload components:
- Workload ".NET Desktop Development". This workload includes the .NET Framework 4.8 SDK and the .NET Framework 4.7.2 targeting pack, as well as the .NET 10.0 SDK (ILSpy.csproj targets .NET 10.0, but we have net472 projects too). Our unit tests require .NET 11.0 SDK.
- Workload "Visual Studio extension development" (Note: ILSpy.VSExtensions.slnx is separate from ILSpy.sln and thus this workload is optional)
- Individual Component "MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools" (or similar)
  - The VC++ toolset is optional; if present it is used for editbin.exe to modify the stack size used by ILSpy.exe from 1MB to 16MB, because the decompiler makes heavy use of recursion, where small stack sizes lead to problems in very complex methods.
Open ILSpy.sln in Visual Studio.
- NuGet package restore will automatically download further dependencies
- Run project "ILSpy" for the ILSpy UI
- Use the Visual Studio "Test Explorer" to see/run the tests
- If you are only interested in a specific subset of ILSpy, you can also use
  - ILSpy.Desktop.slnf: for the cross-platform Avalonia UI and its tests
  - ILSpy.XPlat.slnf: for the cross-platform CLI (ilspycmd) or PowerShell cmdlets
  - ILSpy.VSExtensions.slnx: for the Visual Studio extensions

Note: Visual Studio includes a version of the .NET SDK that is managed by the Visual Studio installer - once you update, it may get upgraded too. Please note that ILSpy is only compatible with the .NET 11.0 SDK and Visual Studio will refuse to load some projects in the solution (and unit tests will fail). If this problem occurs, please manually install the .NET 11.0 SDK from here.

Unix / Mac:

Make sure .NET 10.0 SDK (for run) and .NET 11.0 SDK (for tests) is installed. Better yet, use dotnetup with SDK channel preview.
Make sure PowerShell is installed (formerly known as PowerShell Core)
Clone the repository using git.
Execute git submodule update --init --recursive to download the ILSpy-Tests submodule (used by some test cases).
Use dotnet build ILSpy.Desktop.slnf to build the cross-platform Avalonia desktop UI; run it with dotnet run --project ILSpy.
Use dotnet build ILSpy.XPlat.slnf to build only the CLI tool (ilspycmd) and PowerShell cmdlets.

We recommend Visual Studio Code or derivatives together with DotRush, which is also available for derivatives of VS Code.

How to contribute

Report bugs
If you want to contribute a pull request, please add https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy/blob/master/BuildTools/pre-commit to your .git/hooks to prevent checking in code with wrong formatting. We use tabs and not spaces. The build server runs the same script, so any pull requests using wrong formatting will fail.

Current and past contributors.

Privacy Policy for ILSpy

ILSpy does not collect any personally identifiable information, nor does it send user files to 3rd party services. ILSpy does not use any APM (Application Performance Management) service to collect telemetry or metrics.