NVDA 2026.2beta1 available for testing

Beta1 of NVDA 2026.2 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.

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Highlights

This release includes a new built-in Magnifier feature, improvements to touch gestures and navigation, and expanded speech and braille capabilities.

The Magnifier provides zoom and color filtering options to assist users with visual impairments. The Magnifier currently only supports fullscreen mode, with docked modes planned in a future release.

Touch support has been significantly expanded with new pinch gestures and touch-based browse mode navigation for web content. You can now navigate between links, headings, form fields, and other elements using touch flicks.

Speech features have been enhanced with support for custom speech dictionaries that can be provided by add-ons and new dictionary entry types for more granular control. A new voice setting for OneCore voices was added to control pauses after punctuation. A new command allows repeating the last spoken information, with the ability to display it in a browsable message. The default gesture to repeat the last spoken information is NVDA+x, which can be changed in the Input Gestures dialog.

The braille display can now automatically scroll and DotPad devices support multi-button combinations.

Liblouis has been updated with new Italian and Estonian braille tables.

When resetting NVDA to factory defaults, an Undo button is now available to restore the previous configuration.

NVDA logo on a purple background