NVDA 2026.1 Beta 1 now available for testing
Quentin Christensen
Important Notes:
- This release breaks compatibility with add-ons made for NVDA 2025.3.2 and earlier.
- Windows 8.1 is no longer supported. Windows 10 is the minimum Windows version supported. We recommend updating to Windows 11, or when that’s not possible, to the latest Windows 10 version (22H2).
- 32-bit Windows is no longer supported. Windows 10 on ARM is also no longer supported.
- Wiris MathPlayer is no longer supported.
This release includes built-in support for reading math content with MathCAT.
There have been several improvements to speech. Spelling errors can now be reported with a sound instead of speech when reading. You can now configure NVDA to automatically say all after successfully recognising content, such as with Windows OCR. NVDA no longer reports the language being read as unsupported when the synthesizer supports the language but not the specific dialect.
Braille support has also been improved. It now continues to work when switching to a secure screen, like the sign-in screen or User Account Control dialog. NVDA messages from the local computer are now shown in braille when controlling a computer via Remote Access. Spelling errors and the number of items in a list in browse mode can now be shown in braille. Other braille bug fixes, including in Microsoft Outlook and LibreOffice Writer, have also been added.
In browse mode in web browsers, NVDA no longer treats controls with 0 width or height as invisible. This may make it possible to access previously inaccessible “screen reader only” content on some websites. Malformed links no longer prevent NVDA from reading content in Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers. The browse mode highlighter now appears on content recognition results, such as when using Windows OCR. In Microsoft Word, unassigned Quick Navigation commands to jump to references have been added. They are also now shown in the elements list.
It is now possible to view virus scan results for an add-on from the Add-on Store. For add-ons that include one, you can also view an add-on’s changelog. The reliability of background add-on updates has been improved.
A new “Privacy and Security” category has been added to NVDA’s settings dialog. The “Logging level” and “Allow NV Access to gather NVDA usage statistics” settings have been moved here from the “General” category. The settings for Screen Curtain have also been moved here from the “Vision” category. Additionally, Screen Curtain’s settings are now configuration profile independent.
The NVDA interface is now translated to Cambodian. Liblouis, Unicode CLDR and eSpeak NG have been updated. Added tables for English Grade 3, Japanese (Rokuten Kanji), and Macedonian uncontracted braille. Improved the Biblical Hebrew, Unified English Braille, Greek International, Hungarian, Norwegian, Portuguese 8-dot and Slovakian braille tables. Emoji localizations for Luxembourgish have been added.
There have also been many other bug fixes and improvements.
David Griffith
Sent: 04 February 2026 05:11
To: NVDA Screen Reader Discussion <nvda-...@nvaccess.org>
Subject: [NVDA] NVDA 2026.1 Beta 1 now available for testing
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Rui Fontes
Are you in a browser window?
Best regards,
Rui Fontes
NVDA portuguese team
Gene Asner
these items in input gestures, you must have Browse mode be active.
Items in input gestures are context sensitive. You won't see them
unless you open Input Gestures from where they are active. So open
input gestures when you are in a web page.
Gene
On 2/9/2026 4:27 AM, David Griffith wrote:
> Hello
> I have just installed the Beta in portable mode twice.
> In vanilla mode with no addons installed, in both versions, when I go
> to browse mode in input gestrures there is only one key available, that
> is to switch from browse to focus mode. In previous versions of NVDA
> there were over 30 keyboard gestures available in browse mode input
> gestures, for modification. Where have they all gone?
> The reason I am concerned is that I routinely amend the Text Nav
> gesture , that is move to next text paragraph and speaks it, and moves
> to previous paragraph and speaks it, from the default p and shift p,
> back to the original gesture when it was an addon, before it got moved
> into the core
> My little finger gets worn out using the p key, so I prefer setting the
> keys back to shift alt and down and up arrows as it originally was in
> the addon.
> I have tried trawling through all the input gestures available but
> cannot find where all the normal browse mode gestures have been moved to.
> Can anybody shed any light on this mystery?
> David Griffith
> I
> *From:* Quentin Christensen <que...@nvaccess.org>
> *Sent:* 04 February 2026 05:11
> *To:* NVDA Screen Reader Discussion <nvda-...@nvaccess.org>
> *Subject:* [NVDA] NVDA 2026.1 Beta 1 now available for testing
>
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David Griffith
Sent: 09 February 2026 12:45
To: nvda-...@nvaccess.org <nvda-...@nvaccess.org>
Subject: Re: [NVDA] NVDA 2026.1 Beta 1 now available for testing
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/c9b2a2bb-b862-4e80-fd31-8ae0ce6336ef%40gmail.com.
joseph....@gmail.com
Hi,
Thanks for explaining the situation.
I know exactly what is going on: there are two underlying sources of input gestures NVDA will consult when showing input gestures that appear to apply everywhere:
- Browse Nav add-on: this add-on is a global plugin, meaning commands included with this add-on such as next/previous text paragraph navigation in browse mode will be shown everywhere. This applies to any global plugin that chooses to define all of its commands in one place (global plugin class), assuming that the add-on will be used everywhere. This is not the case, and I recently edited Enhanced Touch Gestures to become dormant when installed on a computer without touch interaction support.
- Custom gestures: when you add custom gestures for commands such as next/previous text paragraph navigation, they will be saved in a file called gestures.ini (or gestures_{lang}.ini) in your NVDA user configuration folder. While listing input gestures, your custom gestures will be picked up, and if NVDA notices the gesture is associated with a script/command that is available, the input hep message (script description) for the custom gesture will be added to input gestures listing. Since you did assign custom keyboard commands to move between text paragraphs, your custom gesture was saved to user configurationfolder, and this will be shown everywhere.
Cheers,
Joseph
NVDA Screen Reader Discussion
Beta2 of NVDA 2026.1 is now available for download and testing. Please see the original thread message for more information about the release and beta testing.
Download: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2026-1beta2/.
Changes introduced in Beta 2:
- Fixed an issue which prevented translated strings being used for the SAPI 4 and 32-bit SAPI 5 synth drivers.
- Fixed a situation where NVDA may unexpectedly run as an administrator.
- Improvements to the documentation about SAPI4 and 32-bit SAPI5 support.
- Updates to translations.
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Sascha Cowley
Beta3 of NVDA 2026.1 is now available for download and testing. Please see the original thread message for more information about the release and beta testing.
Download: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2026-1beta3/
Changes introduced in Beta 3:
- Fixed an occasional freeze with SAPI 4 and 32-bit SAPI 5 synths.
- Fixed an issue which would cause NVDA to remain silent if eSpeak NG was set as the default synthesizer and failed to load when NVDA started.
- Updates to translations.
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