What's New in Qt 6.5

New and Restored Modules in Qt 6.5

Qt 6.5 adds the following modules and tools:

• Qt Quick Effect Maker - A tool to create high-performance shader effects for Qt Quick.
• Qt Quick Effects - A module containing MultiEffect, for applying one or more simple graphical effects on a Qt Quick Item.
• Qt Quick 3D Physics - A physics engine for use with Qt Quick 3D. This module is no longer in technical preview.
• Qt QML Core - A module that exposes various Qt Core APIs to QML.

New and Restored Modules in Technical Preview

• Qt Location's Map renders 2D maps into a Qt Quick application. MapView includes Qt Quick Input Handlers to implement the typical interactive features (zoom, pan, tilt).
• Qt GRPC supports communicating with gRPC services using classes generated based on service descriptions from protobuf .proto-specifications.
• Qt Protobuf supports generating, serializing, and deserializing Qt-based classes from protobuf .proto-specifications.

New Features in Qt 6.5

Qt Core Module

• QTimeZone can now package a Qt::TimeSpec and, when relevant, an offset in a lightweight time representation that unifies the various APIs of QDateTime and QDate that took either a QTimeZone or a Qt::TimeSpec and offset.
• Introduced application permissions API to allow applications to check or request permissions for features that require user consent before use.
• New cross-platform tracing backend in Common Trace Format (CTF).
• QBindable can now be constructed from any property with a NOTIFY signal. This lets you integrate existing, non-bindable properties with bindable properties.
• The qt_generate_deploy_app_script CMake function preferably accepts an argument called OUTPUT_SCRIPT now. Passing the old FILENAME_VARIABLE is deprecated.

Qt GUI Module

• Reintroduced classes QWindowsMimeConverter and QUtiMimeConverter for handling drag'n'drop and clipboard data in platform specific formats on Windows, macOS, and iOS.
• QVulkanInstance now enables Vulkan Portability physical devices by default. This is required to be operational with newer MoltenVK versions on Apple platforms. Added a NoPortabilityDrivers flag that lets you opt out from this.
• The Vulkan rendering infrastructure is now using VK_EXT_debug_utils instead of the deprecated VK_EXT_debug_report and VK_EXT_debug_marker.
• QTextLayout::glyphRuns() can now return the string index corresponding to each glyph when this is requested. Made available through the new function QGlyphRun::stringIndexes().
• Checkbox list items can now be read and written in HTML as well as Markdown, including conversions.
• Added QGuiApplication::setBadgeNumber() to provide feedback to the user about the number of unread messages or similar. The badge will be overlaid the application's icon in the Dock on macOS, the home screen icon on iOS, or the task bar on Windows.

Qt Quick Module

• TableView got support for editing cells using an edit delegate.
• TableView got support for resizing rows and columns using the mouse.
• TableView got support for setting row and column sizes explicitly.
• TableView got a new signal layoutChanged(). This signal can be used to, for example, reposition overlay items.
• TableView got support for doing multi-selections.
• Added support for specifying separate RGB and alpha blend factors in a QSGMaterial.
• The Qt Quick scenegraph is now automatically using persistent, disk-based caching of graphics pipelines or the intermediate format shader bytecode, depending on the platform and the 3D graphics API in use. This is expected to reduce the time spent on creating the graphics pipeline in subsequent runs of the application. In addition, QQuickGraphicsConfiguration provides explicit control over if and where this data is written out and loaded from. This enables advanced use cases such as shipping a pre-seeded cache file with an application or device, which also accelerates first-time startup.
• PinchHandler has new scaleAxis and rotationAxis grouped properties, offering several new values, including the activeValue property which is new in all the handler axis groups. It also got the activeTranslation and persistentTranslation properties that DragHandler already had.
• DragHandler's xAxis and yAxis have new activeValue properties.
• PinchHandler's activeScale (which was previously called scale) is no longer restricted to the range between minimumScale and maximumScale: these limits apply only to persistentScale. Likewise, activeRotation (previously rotation) is no longer restricted to the range between minimumRotation and maximumRotation. These limits are applied the same way for native touchpad pinch gestures as on touchscreens.
• TapHandler::exclusiveSignals now lets you make the singleTapped and doubleTapped signals exclusive.

Qt Labs Animation Module

• BoundaryRule now has a returnedToBounds signal.

Qt Quick Controls Module

• TreeViewDelegate got support editing tree nodes
• The Material style was updated to Material 3.
  • Several controls received visual updates, so it is recommended to check how your application looks and adapt it accordingly:
    • ApplicationWindow
    • Button
    • ComboBox
    • DelayButton
    • Dialog
    • Drawer
    • Menu
    • Popup
    • RangeSlider
    • RoundButton
    • Slider
    • SpinBox
    • Switch
    • TextArea
    • TextField
  • Some new API was added:
    • Material.containerStyle controls the style of the container used by the target control. It can be attached to any window or item, but only TextField and TextArea support it by default.
    • Material.roundedScale controls the radius of rounded corners used on the target control. It can be attached to any window or item, but only the following controls support it by default:
      • Button
      • Dialog
      • DialogButtonBox
      • Drawer
      • Menu
      • Popup
• The iOS style was finished
  • The new controls that were implemented for the iOS style for 6.5 are:
    • BusyIndicator
    • ComboBox
    • DelayButton
    • Dialog
    • DialogButtonBox
    • HorizontalHeaderView
    • SelectionRectangle
    • ToolTip
    • ToolSeparator
    • VerticalHeaderView

Qt Test Module

• Added QTest::currentTestResolved() which returns true if the test has failed or skipped. This can replace QTest::currentTestFailed() as the condition to test on return from a helper function.
• QTest::mouseRelease() and mouseClick() can now be used to test double-clicks, by specifying a realistic timestamp delay, in case you need to check intermediate state between the events. mouseDClick() is still more convenient otherwise.

Qt Widgets Module

• QKeySequenceEdit got two new properties: maximumSequenceLength allows applications to control the length of a key sequence. finishingKeyCombinations defines key combinations that end the recording.
• Added stereoscopic rendering support to QOpenGLWidget, applicable also to any QGraphicsView backed by a QOpenGLWidget viewport. Unlike QOpenGLWindow, or the now-removed QGLWidget in Qt 5 and 4, QOpenGLWidget needs explicit support for this with supporting APIs in place, because applications do not directly render to the native window in this case, and therefore do not have the same control over the active draw buffers as they have with QOpenGLWindow.

Qt Positioning Module

• Introduced SatelliteSource - a QML API for QGeoSatelliteInfoSource.

Qt Serial Bus Module

• Introduced QCanSignalDescription, QCanMessageDescription and QCanUniqueIdDescription classes. These classes are used to provide a set of rules to encode or decode CAN bus messages.
• Introduced QCanFrameProcessor class. This class can be used to decode the received QCanBusFrame into a map of key-value pairs and compose a QCanBusFrame out of a map of key-value pairs.
• Introduced QCanDbcFileParser class. This class is used to parse DBC files and generate message descriptions, which can later be used in QCanFrameProcessor.

All new classes are experimental and are subject to change.

Qt Network Module

• Introduced QHttp1Configuration. The class can be used to configure the maximum number of connections used per host when using HTTP 1 (default: 6).
• QNetworkRequest on Qt for WebAssembly gained the UseCredentialsAttribute attribute, enabling withCredentials for the underlying XMLHttpRequest.

Qt QML Module

• Added API to QQmlApplicationEngine and QQmlComponent to load/create QML elements via their module URI and type-name. In contrast to the URL based functions, this also works with C++ types and inline components.
• QQmlListProperty properties now behave more like arrays, gaining support for methods like map(), reduce() and forEach(). The same holds for other sequence types, like QList<int> and similar.
• Extended the qmltc to support more qml constructs, notably translation bindings, inline components, singletons, and signal handlers for C++-defined signals.
• The QML script compiler can handle additional constructs. In particular:
  • console.log() and friends
  • let and const
  • qsTr() and friends
  • arg() for strings
  • all the remaining bitwise and shift operators
  • the exponentiation operator
• The QML Disk Cache can be controlled in a more fine-grained way using the new environment variable QML_DISK_CACHE.
• Added new public CMake API:
  • Introduced a Qt CMake policy to set a better default for the resource prefix. If QTP0001 policy is set to NEW, the QML engine will always be able to find your QML modules in the resource file system.
• The qt_generate_deploy_qml_app_script CMake function preferably accepts an argument called OUTPUT_SCRIPT now. Passing the old FILENAME_VARIABLE is deprecated.

Qt Quick 3D Module

• Added automatic level of detail (LOD) support for models. This allows generating simplified versions of the meshes during asset import and then automatically picking the appropriate level when rendering.
• Added explicit level of detail (LOD) support to control the opacity of models based on the camera distance.
• Added ExtendedSceneEnvironment, with built-in effects for depth of field, color grading, glow, vignette, lens flare, and others. These effects are performed together, increasing efficiency compared to individual, stand-alone post-processing effects, each requiring one or more render passes.
• Enhanced DebugView with rendering statistics, the list of active mesh and texture assets, and live render pass information, as well as controls to interactively toggle settings, such as wireframe mode and material overrides from DebugSettings.
• Added DebugSettings, available via SceneEnvironment, allowing programmatic control over settings such as wireframe mode and material overrides to only render certain aspects of physically based materials.
• Added InfiniteGrid, implementing an infinite grid in the horizontal plane with fade out.
• Added built-in, simple fog support, available via SceneEnvironment. When enabled, this applies a depth or height fog effect when rendering the models in the scene.
• Improved picking when instanced rendering is used.
• Added vertex color support for PrincipledMaterial and SpecularGlossyMaterial
• Reflection probe: added support for using a provided cubemap texture instead of rendering the scene.
• Post-processing effects were enhanced to properly react to changes in shader source file URIs at run time.
• Added persistent, disk-based caching of runtime-generated material shader data. This is expected to improve application startup and view change times.

Qt WebView Module

• Added WebViewSettings to configure some of the common WebView functionality.

Qt Multimedia Module

• The ffmpeg media backend, being a technical preview in 6.4, becomes the default for macOS, Windows, Android, and Linux except for Yocto distribution. The native backends are still available with limited support.
• Introduced QScreenCapture class that is a new type of video input. It's possible to direct video from QScreenCapture through QMediaCaptureSession to outputs, e.g. QMediaRecorder or QVideoWidget. The screen capture functionality is available only with the ffmpeg media backend.

Platform Changes

WebAssembly

• Added binary package with multithreading enabled to Qt Online Installer.
• Added support for the File System Access API. File dialog calls such as QFileDialog::getOpenFileContent() and QFileDialog::saveFileContent() will now use this API, if supported by the browser.
• Added support for the Local Font Access API. Qt will now use local fonts on browsers which support this API.
• Added tech preview of video playback and camera support to Qt Multimedia.
• Added configure option for WebAssembly SIMD: -feature-wasm-simd128
• Added configure option for WebAssembly exceptions: -feature-wasm-exceptions
• Published Qt Web Utils with utility functions and Qt on web usage examples.
• QTest for WebAssembly now uses emrun by default. A specialized script for WebAssembly drives the execution of automatic tests.

Desktop Platforms

Windows

• The environment variable QT_WIN_DEBUG_CONSOLE can be set to see stdout/stderr messageges in a console window for GUI applications that are started from the command line. Set it to new or attach.

macOS

• Added native backend for QMessageBox and QErrorMessage.

Wayland Client on Linux

• Now supports fractional_scale_v1 protocol for compositors that suggest fractional scale factors for the client.

Mobile Platforms

Android

• Updated Gradle to 8.0 and the Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) to 7.4.1 (requires JDK 11 or above).
• Updated NDK to r25b (25.1.8937393).
• The list of supported versions is now Android 8.0 (API 26) or later.
• Bump the minimum platform build sdk version to 33 (QT_ANDROID_API_VERSION).
• Support more operations on content scheme URIs with Qt file/dir facilities.
• Fixes and documentation updates for QStandardPaths under Android Scoped Storage.
• Print Qt JNI exceptions from Qt and not the Android System.
• Fixed support for APK Signature Scheme v2.

iOS

• Added native implemementation for QColorDialog and QFontDialog.

Embedded Platforms

Boot to Qt

• Boot to Qt stack was updated to use yocto 4.1.2 (langdale).
• Support for macOS host using Docker-based toolchains.
• The Support Levels for Target Hardware were updated and there are now multiple levels of support that apply across specific hardware and OS combinations.

List of API Changes

These pages contain an overview of API changes in Qt 6.5:

• New Classes and Functions in Qt 6.5
• Obsolete Classes