---
title: Adding Kentico controls to the Visual Studio toolbox
related:
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k82/custom-development/developing-web-parts.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k82/developing-websites/developing-websites-using-aspx-templates.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k82/integrating-3rd-party-systems/using-kentico-api-and-controls-externally.md
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

Before you start using Kentico Controls in your project, it is recommended to add the controls to the **Toolbox** in Visual Studio:

1. Open your Kentico web project in Visual Studio. Use the **WebSite.sln** or **WebApp.sln** file in the website installation directory ( _c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Kentico_ by default).
2. Edit any ASPX web form file, for example _**Default.aspx**_ under the project root. This is necessary, because the toolbox only offers the controls when working with ASPX markup.
3. Right-click the **Toolbox** and choose **Add Tab**.
4. Type the name of the new tab (for example _**Kentico**_) and press **Enter**.
5. Right-click the new tab and select **Choose Items**.
6. Click **Browse** on the **.NET Framework Components** tab of the **Choose Toolbox Items** dialog.
7. Navigate to the **CMS\bin** folder under your website.
8. Select the _**CMS.Controls.dll**_ library.
9. Click **Open** and then **OK**.

The controls are now added to the Toolbox. You can drag the controls into the content of your web forms or user controls.