Microsoft Releases Native TypeScript Preview with Up to 10× Performance Boost Using Go
Microsoft unveiled a native preview of TypeScript rewritten in Go, delivering up to ten‑fold speed improvements in compilation, detailing the motivations for the rewrite, performance benchmarks, installation commands, VS Code extension support, current limitations, and future development plans.
On May 22, Microsoft released a preview of native TypeScript that has been completely rewritten in Go, achieving performance improvements of up to ten times compared with the original JavaScript‑based compiler.
Why rewrite? The previous compiler was written in JavaScript and ran on Node.js, which caused noticeable drawbacks such as slow performance and high memory consumption in large projects, single‑threaded execution limits, and tightly coupled type checking, building, and language‑service components.
Why choose Go? Go’s syntax is similar to the original TypeScript compiler, making the migration smoother; it provides automatic memory management, built‑in concurrency for faster compilation, and cross‑platform support, broadening TypeScript’s applicability.
Microsoft’s internal tests showed dramatic speed gains on several real‑world projects: VS Code compilation dropped from 77.8 s to 7.5 s (≈10×), Playwright from 11.1 s to 1.1 s (≈10×), and TypeORM from 17.5 s to 1.3 s (≈13×).
To try the native preview, install the package with npm install -D @typescript/native-preview and use the temporary CLI tool tsgo , for example: npx tsgo --project ./src/tsconfig.json This tool is intended to replace the current tsc command in the future.
Editor support is also provided via a VS Code extension called “TypeScript (Native Preview)”. After installing, enable it through the command palette “TypeScript Native Preview: Enable (Experimental)” or by adding "typescript.experimental.useTsgo": true to the VS Code settings.
Known issues include missing CLI flags such as --build and --declaration , incomplete editor features (auto‑import, find‑all‑references, rename), and configuration adjustments required for older module‑resolution modes (e.g., switching to bundler or nodenext ).
Future plans aim to fill the missing functionality in the short term—adding build mode, project references, rename, signature help, etc.—and in the long term to evolve this preview into TypeScript 7 with daily builds, allowing developers to test new features as soon as they are available.
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