How can I add WebView2 control in Visual Studio Toolbar?

I also had this problem. I followed the instructions in the Getting Started tutorial:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/gettingstarted/winforms

and installed Canary Edge as well, but the controls were still not appearing. However, it is interesting that the Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms references were not showing up in the References of my Windows Form project initially. They are now appearing, but it is not clear why any of the following steps were necessary after initially simply using Nuget to installing Canary and the latest version of the WebView2 control.

  1. After reinstalling Canary, restart Windows
  2. Clean Project
  3. In Manage Nuget packages, reinstall the WebView2 package to a lower version (I used the prelease of the current version, 0.9.538-prerelease)

After the third step, the library references to the WebView2 control appeared in my project References for the first time, and I was able to use them in the Form Designer.

NOTE: trying to update the control to the release version on 0.9.538 caused the references to disappear from the References and the WebView2 control was no longer available to the Form Designer. Reinstalling the prerelease solved the issue, so it appears the release of 0.9.538 supports a smaller scope than its prerelease.

TL;DR: do not update to the latest version of 0.9.538, just use the 0.9.538-prerelease.


You need to make sure that you select the checkbox "include prerelease" next to the text box for searching for packages by name. Then select a version which has a prerelease label.


Even after using the prerelease version, it was not showing in my toolbox in Visual Studio 2017 Community edition 16.6.6

My solution was to do the following:

  1. Right-click on the toolbar in Visual Studios
  2. Select 'Choose Items...'
  3. Click the '.NET Framework Components' tab
  4. Click 'Browse', may have to wait for scan to finish
  5. Navigate to '\packages\Microsoft.Web.WebView2.0.9.538-prerelease\lib\net462'
  6. Select the correct DLL for your application type
  7. Once the file is selected click the 'OK' button in the window

Solution copied from here: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/1112781/webview2-control-is-missing-from-toolbox.html