What's New in Qt 5.9

Qt 5.9 is a long-term support (LTS) release.

New Features in Qt 5.9

Qt Core Module

• Added the qfloat16 f and qfloat16 &f overload functions to the QDataStream class for writing a floating point number to the stream and reading it from the stream.
• Made the QProcessEnvironment class available on iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and VxWorks.
• QRegularExpression now requires the PCRE2 library version 10.20, or later. Support for the PCRE1 library was dropped. A copy of PCRE2 is shipped with Qt and will automatically be used on the platforms that lack it.
• Added the QOperatingSystemVersion class to provide convenient access to the operating system and version.

Qt GUI Module

• Made the QPainter class' GL engine functional with core profile OpenGL contexts.
• Added the QImage::reinterpretAsFormat() function to change the image format without changing the data.
• Added support for compute shaders in QOpenGLShader::ShaderType and QOpenGLShaderProgram also with OpenGL ES 3.1 and newer.
• Enabled stem-darkening and gamma-correction on OpenType fonts on platforms that use FreeType, if supported.

Qt Multimedia Module

Added the following QML properties:

• CameraCapture.supportedResolutions
• CameraFlash.supportedModes
• MediaPlayer.notifyInterval (also for the Audio and Video types)
• Video.loops

Qt Network Module

• Added the QNetworkAccessManager::addStrictTransportSecurityHosts() function to support HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) policies.
• Added the QNetworkAccessManager::redirectPolicy() function and the QNetworkRequest::RedirectPolicy enumeration to determine whether the Network Access API should automatically follow a HTTP redirect response.

Qt QML Module

• Added support for ahead-of-time generation of QML type caches.

Qt Quick Module

• Enabled caching OpenGL shader program binaries used by the Qt GUI module (QPainter's GL paint engine) and the Qt Quick scenegraph on disk to improve application-startup and view-initialization times.
• Added an OpenVG backend for Qt Quick.
• Enabled making window-screen associations directly from QML by using Window.screen and Qt.application.screens. This enables creating multi-screen aware applications for desktop and embedded without involving C++ code.
• Added a way to query information about the font actually used to render a Text type.
• Added an image provider that can share decoded image data and memory between processes.

Qt Quick Controls 2 Module

• Introduced new QML types: DelayButton, ScrollView.
• Added multi-touch support.
• Made the ComboBox type editable.
• Added the interactive property for making a Drawer type non-interactive and persistent.
• Enabled live value updates (by default) for the Slider, RangeSlider, and Dial types.
• Added dedicated notification signals for user interaction: AbstractButton::toggled(), Slider::moved(), SpinBox::valueModified(), and so on.
• Enabled incremental discrete scrolling with the ScrollBar type.
• Added enabling and disabling the swipe for the SwipeDelegate type. In addition, the swipe can now be opened programmatically.
• Added support for the vertical orientation to the SwipeView.orientation property.

Qt 3D Module

• Added rendering Qt Quick 2 scenes to a texture and interacting with them within a 3D world.
• Added a Technical Preview of a new animation subsystem that enables non-blocking, keyframe animations on the threadpool and exporting from animations from Blender.
• Added Physics Based Rendering (PBR) material (QMetalRoughMaterial and QTexturedMetalRoughMaterial) to Qt3DExtras for improved appearance when used with environment maps.
• Added 3D text support to Qt3DExtras.
• Added the LevelOfDetail type to control the representation of an entity based on distance from the observer or size on the screen. It comes with a convenience loader class that loads different QML files.
• Made the Mesh type plugin based. It comes with plugins for the Wavefront OBJ, PLY and FBX formats and makes it easy to add other formats.
• Added distance field based 2D textured text that can be freely rotated but is based on planar geometry.

Qt Bluetooth Module

• Added Classic Bluetooth support for WinRT.
• Added Bluetooth LE Peripheral support for Android.

Qt Charts Module

• Added support for minor grid lines for logarithmic axes.
• Added options for legend marker shapes to QLegend::MarkerShape.
• Added support for adding more than one bar series to a chart.

Qt Location Module

• Added support for rotating and tilting maps.
• Added touch gestures for rotating and tilting maps.
• Improved support for stacking multiple Map types.
• Added the MapCopyrightNotice type to flexibly position the copyrights of multiple map elements on top.
• Enabled styling the HTML copyright using CSS.
• Added support for handing the rendering of map items to the plugin.
• Added the MapboxGL plugin that is based on the mapbox-gl-native mapping engine.
• Added the Map::fitViewportToVisibleMapItems() method to only consider visible items when fitting the viewport.
• Added the MapItemGroup type to combine multiple map items in a separate QML file.
• Added the Map.fieldOfView property to control the camera's field of view when the map is tilted.
• Added the MapParameter type to expose and control plugin-specific runtime functionality.

Qt NFC Module

• Enabled using NFC when running as an Android service.
• Added support for communicating with ISO-DEP, NFC-A, NFC-B, NFC-F, and NFC-V tags or smartcards, such as the German eID card, using QNearFieldTarget::sendCommand() on Android.

Qt SerialBus Module

• Added the CAN FD Bitrate Switch (BRS) and Error State Indicator (ESI) flags to QCanBusFrame (QCanBusFrame::hasBitrateSwitch() and QCanBusFrame::hasErrorStateIndicator()).
• Added QCanBusDeviceInfo for information about available CAN interfaces.
• Added a plugin to support SYS-TEC electronic CAN adapters on Windows.

Qt Virtual Keyboard Module

• Added support for selection handles for the dedicated (desktop) keyboard.
• Changed the behavior of the shift handler to only activate caps lock if the shift key is double-clicked.
• Added support for external keyboard layouts, which allows overriding and exclusion of the built-in keyboard layouts.
• Added a language selection popup for faster selection of the input language.
• Added support for the automatic selection of the only remaining word in the suggestion list.
• Made the word candidate list automatically hidden when inactive.
• Added full screen input mode.

Qt WebEngine Module

• Based on Chromium 56.
• Switched internally to the new Chromium build-system GN.
• Added loading with HTTP POST.
• Added support for user scripts with QQuickWebEngineProfiles and for using QQuickWebEngineUserScripts from C++.
• DownloadItems now get a reason when they are interrupted or fail.

Qt WebSockets Module

• Added support for handling external QTcpSocket objects.

Embedded Platforms

• Added experimental DRM dumb buffer support to the linuxfb platform plugin, to help devices that do not support the deprecated fbdev model (or have problems with fbdev emulation).
• Added support for filtering and prediction of touch events to the evdevtouch plugin.

New Modules

• Qt Gamepad - Enables Qt gaming applications to respond to gamepad input.

This module was previously released as a technology preview and is now a fully supported Qt add-on module.

Technology Preview Modules

• Qt Network Authorization - Online authorization support with OAuth protocol, versions 1 and 2.
• Qt Remote Objects - Sharing QObject interfaces (signals, slots, and properties) between processes or devices,
• Qt Speech - Text to speech and speech recognition functionality. Currently only the text to speech features are released. Includes backends for several speech synthesizers on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android.

Platform Changes

• Removed support for WinRT on Windows 8.1.
• Debug builds on GCC platforms now use -Og optimizations by default. This can be disabled with the configure flag -no-optimize-debug.

Deprecated Functionality

• Qt Script

Deprecated modules are still included in Qt 5.9, but are considered for removal in future releases.

List of API Changes

The pages below contain a list of API changes in Qt 5.9:

• New Classes and Functions in Qt 5.9
• Obsolete Classes

Additions to Other Qt 5 Releases

• What's New in Qt 5.8
• What's New in Qt 5.7
• What's New in Qt 5.6
• What's New in Qt 5.5
• What's New in Qt 5.4
• What's New in Qt 5.3
• What's New in Qt 5.2
• What's New in Qt 5.1
• What's New in Qt 5.0