NVDA 2025.1beta1 available for testing

Beta1 of NVDA 2025.1 is now available for download and testing. For anyone who is interested in trying out what the next version of NVDA has to offer before it is officially released, we welcome you to download the beta and provide feedback using our issue reporting process. By installing the beta you will be opting into NVDA’s beta channel, and will only receive update notifications for beta and release candidate (RC) builds. The beta/RC channel will always keep you up to date with the latest NVDA version. The last RC in a release cycle is identical to the final stable release. To return to the stable release channel, upgrade manually to the latest stable build.

Links

Highlights

This release introduces NVDA Remote Access, allowing you to control a remote computer running NVDA from another device running NVDA.

There are many improvements to speech, particularly responsiveness with SAPI 4, SAPI 5 and OneCore voices. Rate boost and automatic language switching is now supported in SAPI 5. SAPI 4 voices now support audio ducking, leading silence trimming, and keeping the audio device awake.

The Add-on Store’s automatic update system has been improved, allowing you to select channels for automatic updates, and run automatic updates in the background.

It’s now easier to manually refresh OCR and toggle automatic refresh, with new commands.

Native selection is now available in Chrome and Edge.

Microsoft Office and LibreOffice support has improved, notably with more shortcuts being announced.

Default input and output braille tables can now be determined based on the NVDA language. Native support has been added for the Dot Pad tactile graphics device from Dot Inc as a multiline braille display. There have been other minor fixes for braille displays, particularly around connectivity.

LibLouis braille translator, eSpeak-NG and Unicode CLDR have been updated. New Coptic, compact Cuneiform, and Portuguese 6 dot Computer Braille tables are available.

NVDA logo on a purple background