How do you default a new class to public when creating it in Visual Studio?

Question

When I right click in the Solution of a C# Visual Studio project and select Add... > Class... it creates a class without a public modifier. How do I get Visual Studio (2008)

Answer 1

The answer from JochemKempe works fine, but is a little hard, since you need to rewrite protected files in Program Files.

Only to update the answer. Templates for Community edition are in the folder:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates

Another solution

But there is another possibility to create new templates. Copy the files from the source folder to user template folder.

e.g. for Windows Form application it can be one of these source folders (for Visual Studio 2017 Community):

c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Windows Root\Windows\1033\WindowsApplication\
c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Windows Root\Windows\1033\WindowsApplication\
c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplatesCache\CSharp\Windows Root\Windows\1033\WindowsApplication\

The default user template folder is (for Visual Studio 2017 Community):

C:\Users\\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Templates\ProjectTemplates\

And the destination folder for new Windows Form Application template would be:

C:\Users\\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Windows\1033\MyWindowsApplication\

With this you will have two "Windows Form Application" when creating new project. The distinction between these two is only in the default file name. To make a better distinction it is possible to change the displayed name of the template. To change the template name, update the .vstemplate file.

The original csWindowsApplication.vstemplate contains line:

To change the name you need to change the line to something like this:

    My Windows Form Application

The negative part of this solution is, that you have to rename your new template and you add a new template to existing templates (the old 'incorrect' example will remain and you can still unwillingly use it).

But there is also a good part. You do not need to be administrator to add or update the example. (There is no need to rewrite files in Program Files folder.)