How do you use Hot reloading?

So I build my vs project and it opens in the editor and I can test it and what now. Now what? If I stop vs it will close the editor. Can I just make changes while its running and they will work? or do I have to do something else…

UBT will hot reload when you build code when editor runs, you be notified on beginning of building that it’s gonna do hot reload. When building is done, Editor will swap dll and new code will be loaded.

Open the Unreal Launcher and open your project from there instead of running it from within VS.

From inside the UE4 Editor you can then right-click a class of yours and chose “Edit Source Code…”. This way the UE4 Editor will create an independent instance of VS for you. When you compile a class in VS wile running it from the Editor, UE4 will be aware of that change and automatically hot reload the necessary DLL’s generated by that instance of VS.

Now, if you open VS first, build your project and run it, then the Editor will be a running instance inside VS and you will not be able to compile anything in VS while the Editor is running.

Very usefull tip. BTW, the “Compile” button inside the UE4Editor will perform the “Hot Reload” right?

Right. By the way, this answer is technically incorrect. You can open visual studio first and run without debugging. That will start the editor as a new application, allowing you to do whatever in Visual Studio. You are only bound to Visual Studio if you Start with Debugging (F5).