NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2026.3 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version.
Highlights
This release includes significant performance improvements, improvements to NVDA’s dialogs, and expanded touch screen input.
Several performance improvements have been made to reduce lag and improve responsiveness. NVDA now fetches and caches more information about controls in the background, improving performance in controls such as combo boxes and File Explorer. NVDA no longer causes File Explorer or other applications to crash when NVDA is exited or restarted. NVDA now recovers more quickly when an application stops responding, and will no longer freeze or flood the log with errors from unresponsive applications.
Context menus and keyboard shortcuts have been added to the Configuration Profiles, Input Gestures, and Speech Dictionaries dialogs, making these dialogs easier to use with the keyboard. It is also now possible to change an existing gesture directly in the Input Gestures dialog. The dialog used to present browseable messages has been modernized and now better supports resizing, maximizing, and minimizing.
Touch screen input has been significantly expanded. Sequential two-flick gestures now combine two flicks in quick succession into a single gesture, greatly increasing the number of bindable touch gestures. Edge gestures are also now supported, allowing gestures that start from any screen edge to be bound independently from the same gesture performed in the center of the screen.
A new unassigned command has been added to move the mouse cursor to the center of the magnified view. Windows OCR can now be used while the Screen Curtain or NVDA’s built-in Magnifier is active.
Liblouis has been updated with new Elfdalian, Sami, Maori, New Zealand Unified English Braille, Haitian Creole braille tables, a Norwegian table for Spanish text, and additional Swedish 6 and 8 dot variants. eSpeak NG has been updated with added support for Ligurian and Abkhaz.
Important Note:
Please note, after updating any software, it is a good idea to restart the computer. Restart by going to the Shutdown dialog, selecting “restart” and pressing ENTER. Updating software can change files which are in use. This can lead to instability and strange behaviour which is resolved by rebooting. This is the first thing to try if you do notice anything odd after updating.
Links
While downloading NVDA, please consider becoming a monthly donor. Contributions like yours help NV Access continue our important work.
We also have a range of training material in the NV Access Shop to help you increase your skills with NVDA. Start with the popular Basic Training for NVDA in electronic text, audio and braille. Save with the NVDA Productivity Bundle. This includes Basic Training, all our Microsoft Office training, and telephone support.
- Download NVDA 2026.3
- SHA256 sum: a8a87cb823da0c62cfbae4a444ae5ae238d54dc82ad6d46d3fdb3fef082799b2
- What’s new in NVDA 2026.3
Close-up photograph of NVDA logo in notification area.