The Arduino IDE Version 2 is out of Beta!

September 2022 saw the full release of the Arduino IDE version 2.0. It's been in beta for a while, and those of us who'd been putting it through its paces found lots to like. It feels like a fully-fledged code editor now, with strong flavors of Visual Studio Code and other lightweight proto-IDEs.

There's a massive wealth of new features, all documented on the Arduino website but there are a few standouts that really make it a nice place to code now. Oh and yes, that's coding on the Raspberry Pi Pico using native Arduino code, but that is the hard work of earlephilhower on GitHub rather than Arduino!

Debugging in the Arduino IDE 2.0 is on par with most other hardware debugging solutions now, with options for stepping into and through code with breakpoints and support for J-Link and Atmel-ICE. Other quality-of-life things include an official dark mode, code auto-completion, and much easier board and library management.

Way back when the beta was released, Andreas Spiess did a fantastically thorough video that is still relevant today:

To get the new IDE, head to the Arduino IDE v2 page. You'll also need a development board, but it doesn't have to be an Arduino Uno or even an Arduino board at all! The new IDE supports the Raspberry Pi Pico and ESP32-based development boards too.