We have released Qt 6.8 Beta 1. As usual, Qt 6.8 Beta 1 is available via Qt Online Installer. In addition, the source packages are available in the Qt Account Portal for commercial users and in the opensource download area for opensource users.
What's new in Qt 6.8
To see what new Qt 6.8 brings, please check "What's new" -documentation for Qt 6.8. Note that the documentation is still under construction, so some of the Qt 6.8 feature highlights are still missing and the documentation will be updated during the beta phase.
Qt 6.8 adds many new modules that were previously available as technology preview. The new modules include: Qt Graphs (consisting of two submodules for QML and Widgets), Qt GRPC and Protobuf, Qt Http server, and also a new SVG to QML conversion tool.
Extensions category
On the installer side, there are a few bigger changes in the Qt 6.8 release compared to previous Qt 6.x releases.
There is a new 'Extensions' node in the installer at the same level as 'Qt' node. Qt Insight Tracker, Qt PDF, and Qt Webengine modules are found under that 'Extensions' node from Qt 6.8.0 Beta1 onwards.
Other packaging adjustments
Qt5 Compatibility Module, Qt Quick3D, Qt Quick Timeline, and Qt Shader Tools modules are moved from 'Qt' - 'Qt <version> ' to 'Qt' - 'Qt <version> ' - 'Additional Libraries' from Qt 6.8.0 Beta1 onwards.
Other packaging changes include that in Windows we have replaced MSVC 2019 pre-build binaries with MSVC2022, see more information from blog post.
Cross-compiled Windows on ARM binaries are replaced by native Windows on ARM binaries. Read more about Windows on ARM support from blog post.
Note! In Qt 6.8.0 Beta 1, the MSVC 2022 ARM64 binaries are incorrectly visible on Qt Online installer on x86_64 machines. Please don't use these binaries for testing. Instead, test the MSVC 2022 ARM binaries on the ARM64 machines. For more information, see https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-126446.
Provide feedback
We hope you will find some time to try the Qt 6.8 Beta releases and provide feedback. For any issues you may find, please submit a detailed bug report to bugreports.qt.io. You are also welcome to join the Qt Project mailing lists and developer forums discussions.
Qt 6.8 release plan
We will release new beta releases during the beta phase so please check updates regularly from the online installer. Our target is to release Qt 6.8.0 at the end of September 2024. See more details about Qt 6.8 schedule from Qt 6.8 releasing wiki.
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