NVDA 2024.1beta2 available for testing

December 27, 2023 10:02 am

Beta2 of NVDA 2024.1 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. 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 channel will always keep you up to date with latest NVDA version, where the latest RC build will be identical to the latest stable build if no newer RC is available. To return to the stable release channel, upgrade manually to the latest stable build.

Highlights

A new “on-demand” speech mode has been added. When speech is on-demand, NVDA does not speak automatically (e.g. when moving the cursor) but still speaks when calling commands whose goal is explicitly to report something (e.g. report window title). In the Speech category of NVDA’s settings, it is now possible to exclude unwanted speech modes from the Cycle speech modes command (NVDA+s).

A new Native Selection mode (toggled by NVDA+shift+f10) is now available in NVDA’s browse mode for Mozilla Firefox. When turned on, selecting text in browse mode will also manipulate Firefox’s own native selection. Copying text with control+c will pass straight through to Firefox, thus copying the rich content, rather than NVDA’s plain text representation.

The Add-on Store now supports bulk actions (e.g. installing, enabling add-ons) by selecting multiple add-ons. There is a new action to open a reviews webpage for the selected add-on.

The audio output device and ducking mode options have been removed from the “Select Synthesizer” dialog. They can be found in the audio settings panel which can be opened with NVDA+control+u.

eSpeak-NG, LibLouis braille translator, and Unicode CLDR have been updated. New Thai, Filipino and Romanian braille tables are available.

There are many bug fixes, particularly for the Add-on Store, braille, Libre Office, Microsoft Office and audio.

Changes introduced in Beta 2:

Bug fixes for installing and uninstalling add-ons
Speech text is no longer updated when the mouse moves in the Speech Viewer
Syntax fixes for documentation
Updates to translations

Important Note:

This release breaks compatibility with add-ons made for NVDA 2023.3 and earlier.
Windows 7, and Windows 8 are no longer supported. Windows 8.1 is the minimum Windows version supported.

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