Easily see applied usings with implicit usings activated

Question

Implicit usings is nice as it removes a lot of boilerplate, but sometimes I catch myself wanting to easily see which dependencies a specific file has. Not even after decompiling the dll the implicit usings are shown.

Is there any neat way to check this?

Now, I do one of these, not neat ways:

Hovering over each class
Turning off implicit usings and import all missing usings, and then revert

TheXenocide · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-02 21:17:16Z

1

This doesn't cover global using ...; statements in .cs files, but for a fairly simple approach to just get some output related to the <Using Include="..." /> elements provided via MSBuild (project SDK, NuGet packages, Directory.Build.props, .csproj, etc.) you can add this to a project :

  <Target Name="ListUsings" AfterTargets="Build">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="@(Using)" />
  </Target>

With .NET 10 Preview the default list I got in an empty project was:

System
System.Collections.Generic
System.IO
System.Linq
System.Net.Http
System.Threading
System.Threading.Tasks

Though if you use a .NET Framework target framework (e.g. net48), starting with the .NET 8 SDK System.Net.Http is no longer included because it is not automatically available in the base framework and requires a NuGet Package.

answered Jul 2 at 21:17

TheXenocide

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Max · Accepted Answer · 2024-05-23 13:54:22Z

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For decompiling I usually use dotPeek, which doesn't show the usings (might be some setting I'm not aware of).

I googled for alternatives and tried out ILSpy VS extension which actually does the job!

I don't mark this as correct answer yet, if anyone knows a way that doesn't require external tools, that would be preferable.

answered May 23, 2024 at 13:54

Max

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Olivier Jacot-Descombes · Accepted Answer · 2024-05-23 15:04:58Z

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Visual Studio shows a "global 'using' directive" icon in the top-left corner of the editor:

If you click it, it will reveal your global usings. This includes the ones from the project template (*.GlobalUsings.g.cs) as well as your explicitly declared global usings.

This does, however, not show the dependencies, as always all the global usings will be listed. But still a nice feature.

It helps to set the following Visual Studio Option:

You can then simply click on a directive in the pop-up shown in the first image to open the corresponding global usings file and to see the faded out directives.

Btw., I wonder why they have chosen to include System.Net.Http in a WinForms project (shown in the image above).

edited May 23, 2024 at 15:04

answered May 23, 2024 at 14:42

Olivier Jacot-Descombes

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2 Comments

Max Over a year ago

Thanks, didn't know about that. Didn't answer the question though, and as I tend to keep global usings in a separate file, this doesn't add much value. Good question about System.Net.Http, according to this link it's removed, a bit vague what they're referring to though, learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/project-sdk/….

Max Over a year ago

Comment after edit: I'd like to see the usings for a specific file, not which usings global usings that are unused for the whole project, see the gif below in my answer, where I can check the usings that applies for a specific file.

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