What's New in Qt 6.8

New and Restored Modules in Qt 6.8

Qt 6.8 adds the following modules and tools:

  • The svgtoqml tool is now available out of tech preview. It can be used to generate QML code from SVG documents. It supports a static subset of the SVG Tiny 1.2 profile.

New and Restored Modules in Technical Preview

Note: API and ABI stability is not guaranteed for modules in technical preview.

New Features in Qt 6.8

Qt Core Module

Qt Graphs Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt GRPC Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt GUI Module

Qt Graphs Module

  • Brought out of tech preview.
  • Split into two submodules: QtGraphs and QtGraphsWidgets to remove the requirement for including widgets into pure QML applications.

Qt Location Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Multimedia Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Network Module

Qt OPC UA Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Network Auth Module

  • Added QOAuthUriSchemeReplyHandler class, which handles private/custom and https URI scheme redirects (on supported platforms).
  • Added Proof of Key Code Exchange (PKCE) support to QOAuth2AuthorizationCodeFlow class. PKCE is a recommended security measure to mitigate authorization code interception attacks.

Qt Positioning Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Protobuf Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt QML Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Quick Module

  • Added font.contextFontMerging, which can be used to enable a new font merging algorithm that takes the full text into account when selecting fallback fonts. This may come at some more cost, but in certain cases it will give better results.
  • Added the Image.retainWhileLoading property. When set to true on images that load asynchronously, the current image data will be retained until the new image is fully loaded. This can avoid flickering.
  • Added ShapePath.fillItem to Qt Quick Shapes. This can be used to take any texture provider item (such as layered items and images) and use them as fill for the shape.
  • Added ShapePath.fillTransform to Qt Quick Shapes, which can be used to set an arbitrary transform on the shape's fill, whether it is an item or a gradient.
  • Added PlanarTransform, a utility object providing simple functions for specifying 2D transformation matrices.
  • Introduced the VectorImage: A component which can be used to render vector graphics directly Qt Quick with hardware acceleration and no pre-rasterization. It currently supports the SVG format (a static subset of the SVG Tiny 1.2 profile.)

Qt Quick Controls Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Quick Shapes Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Quick Timeline Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Quick 3D Module

  • Technology Preview of XR support for Qt Quick 3D
    • Support for Head Mounted Displays (HMD) using OpenXR such as the Meta Quest 2 and 3
    • Support for Apple Vision Pro
    • Multi-view rendering (render both eyes in a single pass)
    • Spatial input support via hand tracking or controllers
    • Support for spatial anchors
  • Improved Shadow Rendering
    • Overall quality improvements
    • Enhanced shadow debug tooling
    • Cascading Shadow Maps
    • Percentage-closer filtering (PCF) soft shadows.
  • PrincipledMaterial Enhancements
    • Additional parameters for adjusting Fresnel
    • Support for property masking based on the vertex color attribute
  • CustomMaterial: expose remaining properties from PrincipledMaterial

Qt Quick 3D Physics Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Serial Bus Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Sql Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt SVG Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Test Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt TextToSpeech Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt WebEngine Module

Qt WebView Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Qt Widgets Module

  • Nothing to see here.

Tools

Qt Widgets Designer

  • Nothing to see here.

Platform Changes

Desktop Platforms

Windows

  • Changed the font system to use DirectWrite as the default backend. This enables some modern features which were not available with the legacy GDI backend. The previous backend is still available and can be enabled by passing fontengine=gdi as parameter to the QPA plugin.

macOS

  • Nothing to see here.

X11

  • Nothing to see here.

Wayland Client on Linux

  • Nothing to see here.

WebAssembly

  • Nothing to see here.

Mobile Platforms

Android

  • Bumped the minimum supported version to Android 9.
  • Added support for build.gradle namespace property.
  • Added a CMake property QT_ANDROID_PACKAGE_NAME to set the package name.
  • Updated Gradle to 8.7 and AGP to 8.4.0.
  • Added support for building AAR library packages.
  • Deprecated the native Android backend in Qt Multimedia.
  • When opening libraries with QLibrary, JNI_OnLoad is no longer called by default.
  • QtQuickView and QML Embedding:
    • Added strong typing support for QtQuickView API.
    • Added API to manage QML Components, under this Java classes under QtQuickView were moved to own classes. This includes:
      • QtQuickView.SignalListener to QtSignalListener
      • QtQuickView.StatusChangeListener to QtQmlStatusChangeListener
      • QtQuickView Status to QtQmlStatus
    • Added Java classes QtAbstractItemModel, QtAbstractListModel and QtModelIndex that wraps QAbstractItemModel, QAbstractListModel, and QModelIndex respectively.
    • Added support for QML embedding from a Service.

iOS

  • Nothing to see here.

Embedded Platforms

Boot to Qt

  • Nothing to see here.

VxWorks

  • Nothing to see here.

INTEGRITY

  • Nothing to see here.

List of API Changes

These pages contain an overview of API changes in Qt 6.8: