Qt 6 Reaches Feature Parity with Qt 5 - the Qt 6.2 Alpha Released

We have released Qt 6.2 Alpha today. The Qt 6.2 is the first Qt 6 release which includes all widely used Qt add-on modules previously available in the Qt 5.15 release. Compared to Qt 6.1 the upcoming Qt 6.2 brings support to 13 additional modules totaling to over 50 modules supported with Qt 6.2. On top of this, Qt 6.2 is also the first release in the Qt 6 series to provide Long Term Support for commercial licensees.

The Qt 6.2 release provides multiple new features, for example 3D particles allowing you to create exciting 3D user experiences with Qt Quick 3D. Qt 6.2 also extends the Qt 6 promise of limitless scalability with supporting Vulkan, Metal, and Direct3D12 as new deployment environments for hardware accelerated graphics. Among the 13 add-on modules previously not available with Qt 6, included in Qt 6.2 are a significantly updated Qt Multimedia, as well as widely used Qt Bluetooth and Qt WebEngine modules improving your ability to innovate in next generation user experiences.

Qt 6.0 released in December 2020 contained all of the essential functionality and a few of the most commonly used add-ons, but missed many of the additional modules needed by users. While the chosen approach helped in keeping the Qt 6.0 stable, it has also caused the users depending upon some of the missing add-ons not to be able to migrate to Qt 6 yet. With Qt 6.2 we can proudly say that we have reached enough feature parity for most of the users to migrate to Qt 6 and enjoy all the great new items it offers. Qt 6.2 - together with the new capabilities in Qt Creator 5.0, Qt Design Studio 2.2, and the quality assurance tools Squish and Coco - demonstrates how Qt can help you to be productive now and in the future.

New modules in Qt 6.2:

• Qt Bluetooth
• Qt Multimedia
• Qt NFC
• Qt Positioning
• Qt Quick Dialogs
• Qt Remote Objects
• Qt Sensors
• Qt Serialbus
• Qt Serialport
• Qt Webchannel
• Qt Webengine
• Qt Websockets
• Qt Webview

In addition to the separate modules above Qt Android Extras and as well as other platforms extras functionality is brought into Qt Base and no longer available as separate modules. More details about new modules and features can be read from Qt 6.2 New features page. Please remember the page is still under construction and will be updated during the Alpha and Beta phases. Note also that even though we have aimed to keep source compatibility as much as possible, Qt 6 is a new major version of Qt and not 1:1 same as Qt 5. Please check the porting guide for details on the changed / removed API to see guidance on how to move your project to Qt 6. 

We will update the Qt for Device Creator (B2Qt) reference images with Qt 6.2 Alpha in the coming days for other supported modules, but the Qt WebEngine is not yet included. For the desktop and mobile platforms all modules are available in the Alpha snapshot, except Qt Multimedia binaries are missing (available only for Linux) and also Qt WebEngine is not yet available for macOS. These will come later in the pre-release snapshots.

We have done our best to make sure that all the new stuff is thoroughly tested, but we need your help to make sure that it also works for your use cases. So please start testing now and report all your findings in Jira.

While Alpha milestone is typically a source-only release we have already created the binaries, so you can conveniently install the Qt 6.2 Alpha via the maintenance tool. Or you can do a clean installation by using the Qt Online Installer. Qt 6.2 Alpha source packages can be downloaded from the Qt Account portal and the download.qt.io as well.