vshwere.exe is the Visual Studio Locator. vswhere.exe can be used to determine the root installation directory of Visual Studio, which is pointed at with the Visual Studio environment variable %VSINSTALLIDR% if the respective batch files were run. vswhere.exe is promised to be located under %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer after installing Visual Studio (%ProgramFiles% in a 32 bit environment prior to Windows 10). -all | Finds all instances even if they are incomplete and may not launch. |
-prerelease | Also searches prereleases. By default, only releases are searched. |
-products arg | One or more product IDs to find. Defaults to Community, Professional, and Enterprise. * by itself searches all installed product instances. See https://aka.ms/vs/workloads for a list of product IDs. |
-requires arg | One or more workload or component IDs required when finding instances. All specified IDs must be installed unless -requiresAny is specified. See https://aka.ms/vs/workloads for a list of workload and component IDs. |
-requiresAny | Find instances with any one or more workload or components IDs passed to -requires. |
-version arg | A version range (with include/exclude semantics) for instances to find. Example: [15.0,16.0) will find versions 15.*. |
-latest | Return only the newest version and last installed. |
-legacy | Also searches Visual Studio 2015 and older products. Information is limited. This option cannot be used with either -products or -requires. |
-path arg | Gets the instance for the current path. Not compatible with any other selection option. |
-sort | Sorts the instances from newest version and last installed to oldest. When used with "find", first instances are sorted then files are sorted lexigraphically. |
-format arg | Return information in the indicated format which is one of json, text, value or xml. |
-property arg | The name of a property to return. Defaults to "value" format. Use delimiters ".", "/", or "_" to separate object and property names. Example: "properties.nickname" will return the "nickname" property under "properties". |
-find arg | Returns matching file paths under the installation path. Defaults to "value" format. Supported patterns: ? (any one character except \), * (zero or more characters except \), ** (searches current directory and subdirectories for the remaining search pattern) |
-nologo | Do not show logo information. (Only the text format shows a format). |
-utf8 | Use UTF-8 encoding (recommended for JSON). |
-?, -h or -help | Prints a summary of program options |
cmd.exe: C:\> "%programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere" -latest -property installationPath C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community
PS C:\> & 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe' -requires Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 -property installationPath
vswhere.exe is open source and hosted on Github.