Planning Ahead

Posted on December 15, 2025

It’s common to recapitulate the past year as it ends, but let’s do something different and, instead of looking back at the record 6 releases we made in 2025 (it helps to introduce some bugs in them, so as to require making bug fix releases soon after, but they still count), let’s see what is coming in 2026.

First of all, we are going to release 3.3.2 relatively soon, maybe in January but hopefully not later than February. This release will bring a few new features that are already implemented in master (and are eagerly awaiting being tested, so if you’re interested in using them, please consider checking them out even before this release):

• There is the new wxStyledTextCtrlMiniMap class, which implements a small map, showing a scaled-down overview of the document being edited in the main wxStyledTextCtrl and automatically synchronized with it. It is very simple to use, as it’s usually enough to just create it, see the updated stc sample for an example showing it, so there is not much to say about it, but it should be appreciated by the users. Thanks to GIANTS Software for the grant which allowed us to develop this feature!

• Another new UI feature is the support for minimizing panes in wxAUI into taskbar-like docking bars. This is, again, very simple to use from the application point of view, as it’s enough to just call MinimizeButton function of wxAuiPaneInfo class when creating the pane to enable it and everything else is handled automatically by wxAUI. However there are some customization options available already and we will probably add more of them before final 3.3.2 release, so please let us know what else would you like to be able to change.

• And the final relatively important recently implemented feature has nothing to do with the UI: it’s the possibility to choose between GLX and EGL-based implementations of wxGLCanvas in wxGTK. Previously this choice had to be done at compile-time, meaning that applications were forced to use EGL, even when using X11 GTK backend, where using GLX would be possible. Now it is possible to call PreferGLX function to do it in this case.

• Of course, there were many other improvements and bug fixes since 3.3.1, in particular it is worth mentioning that all the third party libraries bundled with wxWidgets have been updated to their latest versions (thanks Maarten!), many bugs were fixed when using RTL writing direction (thanks Ali!), a few more classes were implemented in wxiOS (thanks Robert!) and wxStaticText has finally learnt how to wrap its contents automatically.

After 3.3.2 we will start thinking about making 3.4.0 release, which will be the first stable release with dark mode support for Windows. Right now it looks like we may not even need a 3.3.3 before it, as no other major changes are currently planned, but this may, of course, change depending on the feedback we get after 3.3.2 release.

One thing that we unfortunately almost surely still won’t have in 3.4.0 is GTK 4 support in wxGTK. This is something that will become more and more necessary with time passing, of course, but upgrading from GTK 3 to GTK 4 is a major endeavour and we’re still looking for volunteers and/or grants to make it happen. But surely if we wait for long enough, we’ll just be able to ask an LLM to write wxGTK4 for us, right?

Let me close this forecast for 2026 on this optimistic note. Happy holidays and let’s all hope for a better next year, and not just for wxWidgets!

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