NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2025.3.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version.
This is a patch release to fix a security issue and a bug.
Read the full changes and download at https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-3-1/
@NVAccess It's odd. I'm running NVDA V2025.3.1rc1 on my work machine, but when I check for updates, I'm told no update is available.
@NVAccess I ended up updating manually as the auto-updater didn't work at all.
@amir It's a quirk of the way we do things:
- Stable versions only update to stable versions.
- Beta and RC versions will update to newer beta or RC versions but not stable. So NVDA 2025.3.1 RC will automatically update to NVDA 2026.1 Beta 1 when it comes out.
The last RC is identical to the final stable version in all but version number - so if you are running NVDA 2025.3.1 RC, you have exactly the same code as someone with NVDA 2025.3.1 (stable), even though it may seem a little odd :)
@NVAccess Thanks for the explanation! As I'm an alpha person, switching to RC or beta has these oddities for me - LOL! Once 64-Bit becomes more stable and a couple more add-ons become compatible, I'll switch to alpha.
@amir It's one of the reasons some people prefer the "Update CHannel Selector" add-on, as it does allow you to more easily jump between channels (note that with that add-on, as we also recommend to anyone doing it manually - say an alpha build comes out today and you install that - if you change your mind and switch back to the stable channel, it WON'T change until the NEXT build for that channel comes out.
@amir This is because NVDA accounts for things which may change when updating - for instance sometimes the format of the settings file changes (eg when we added "Only in edit controls" to speak typed words and characters - those values changed from boolean on or off, to having three states - but it doesn't account for any changes when downgrading.
@amir I have to say that the alpha versions are actually quite stable for me. I use the alpha versions daily on one of my devices. Although I would never recommend alpha versions for general use, I honestly experience far fewer problems than expected.
The main issues are indeed add-ons that need to be adjusted and the AI descriptions, which I really hope will improve with future support for other models. Other than that, everything works fine.
@artin I've been mostly an alpha user and tester over the past 3 years or so. But this time around, the 64-Bit alphas have more serious add-on issues. Namely ColumnsReview and BrowserNav, two of my major add-ons, either don't work or don't function properly. So I can't use the alphas daily. Also the alphas, at least when used in portable mode, can't read menu items in some apps or fail to read the entire window in some others. As for image descriptions, they're, IMO, absolutely useless and misleading at this stage unless NVAccess does something serious about it.
@amir Interesting, I don’t have the problem that some menu items or windows are not read by NVDA. Perhaps there is a difference between the installed and portable versions?
As far as the AI is concerned, I unfortunately have to agree with you. I hope that a better model can be used in the stable version, otherwise I think it would be better to wait a while with this feature.