In recent editions, we’ve covered some of the new features in NVDA 2021.1. The exciting news this time, is we’re already up to a beta of NVDA 2021.2!
NVDA 2021.2 Beta 1
NVDA 2021.2 Beta 1 is now available for testing. There are a couple of big things for this release:
NVDA 2021.2 introduces preliminary Windows 11 support. While Windows 11 is yet to be released, this release has been tested on preview versions of Windows 11.
NVDA 2021.2 includes an important fix for Screen Curtain on Windows 11 and Windows 10 21H2. Due to a change in the Windows Magnification API, Screen Curtain had to be updated to support the newest versions of Windows. Use NVDA 2021.2 to activate Screen Curtain with Windows 10 21H2 (10.0.19044) or later. This includes Windows 10 Insiders and Windows 11. For security purposes, when using a new version of Windows, get visual confirmation that the Screen Curtain makes the screen entirely black.
The COM Registration Fixing Tool can now resolve more problems when running NVDA. There are updates to the synthesizer eSpeak-NG and braille translator LibLouis. There are also various bug fixes and improvements, notably for braille support and Windows terminals, calculator, emoji panel and clipboard history.
Read the full NVDA 2021.2 Beta 1 announcement, which also has the What’s new for that version, and the all important link to download the beta.
Updates to eSpeak-NG and LibLouis
In the Last In-Process edition, we noted that there was an update to LibLouis in NVDA 2021.1. The piece also covered how both LibLouis and eSpeak-NG are open source projects, like NVDA.
We’ve once again updated the builds of both LibLouis and eSpeak-NG for NVDA 2021.2 Beta 1. We know a lot of people are fans of eSpeak-NG. Of course, all our Braille users rely on LibLouis, so it’s important to test updates to these dependencies.
Configuration profiles
We often get asked about how to make NVDA behave differently in a particular program. The answer is: Configuration profiles. We’ve covered creating a profile for “Say all” previously.
Probably the most common use of configuration profiles is to make application-specific profiles. To create a profile for a specific program:
- Open the program you want to create a profile for.
- Press NVDA+control+p to open the “Configuration Profiles” dialog directly. Alternatively, press NVDA+n, then C to get to the same place.
- Press alt+n to create a new profile.
- The focus starts in the “Profile name” edit box. Leave this blank and press TAB to the “Use this profile for” set of radio buttons.
- Press the right arrow once to “Current application (name)”. “Name” is the name of the program executable. Note that in some cases this may not be the regular name of the program, eg Microsoft Word is called: “Winword”.
- Press ENTER to create the profile and load it. The dialogs close and focus returns to the program.
From now on, NVDA saves any configuration changes while using that program in the profile for that program. The exception to this is changes to NVDA’s “general” settings. These include NVDA’s logging level or NVDA’s interface language. These settings are not application specific. Any changes you make to them are made overall, regardless of any profile in use.
It is possible to delete unneeded configuration profiles from the profiles dialog:
- Press NVDA+control+p to open the profiles dialog.
- Use the arrow keys to select the profile to remove.
- Press ALT+D for delete the selected profile.
That’s all for this week. Be sure to check out NVDA 2021.2 Beta1, and join in the conversation in the NVDA user email group.