Canvus Client 26.x release notes

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Canvus 26.09.6

Released on September 2026

A maintenance release: one stability fix, and the NDI attribution Vizrt require.

New Features and Improvements

NDI attribution. The About box now shows "NDI® is a registered trademark of Vizrt NDI AB" together with a link to ndi.video, and the same line appears under Video Inputs whenever an NDI source is listed. NDI's combined third-party license file is installed alongside the NDI runtime library

Bug Fixes

A page turn on a PDF can no longer freeze the client. The gesture could leave the page position as an invalid number, after which the page flow looped on the main thread until the built-in watchdog stopped Canvus 30 seconds later — easiest to trigger on a full-screen PDF. The page position is now kept valid at every step, and the page-ordering code can no longer loop regardless of what it is given. Nothing about how PDFs look or behave has changed

Canvus 26.09.5

Released on September 2026

A compatibility release. No new features; it is the first client build on the updated platform libraries.

Bug Fixes

Newer servers no longer disconnect older clients. Canvus now stays connected to a server whose canvases contain content types this client does not know. Until now the client dropped the connection the moment such an item arrived; from 26.09.5 the item is skipped, the rest of the canvas loads, and the connection survives. Together with the existing handling of unknown item properties, any 26.x client works with any 26.x server, in both directions; only a new major version can change that
Startup logging fix. Log lines written from several threads during the first moments of startup could corrupt memory in the platform library. No visible behavior changes, but a rare crash source is gone

Canvus 26.09.4

Released on September 2026

This release brings the 26.08 and 26.09 line to general availability. It gathers everything from the interim 26.08.1, 26.09.0, 26.09.1 and 26.09.3 builds, so it covers roughly six weeks of changes rather than a single increment.

New Features and Improvements

NDI outputs. Canvus can now publish parts of a wall to the network as NDI video and audio streams, for a production switcher, recorder or another machine to pick up. An output is declared alongside the physical displays in screen.xml, so a region can be sent to the network without occupying a physical display output, and it costs the physical displays nothing measurable. Audio accompanies the video
NDI sources on the canvas. NDI streams on the network now appear alongside webcams and capture cards when adding a video source, listed by the name the sending machine publishes. They are treated as live streams — there is no timeline to seek — and audio from the source plays with the video
Video canvas backgrounds. A canvas background can now be a video. Choose "Image / Video" in the background settings and drop a video onto the background video tile, or drag one straight off the canvas. It plays behind your content, looping continuously and always silent
Dropped background videos are prepared automatically — a file already in a suitable format is repackaged in moments without re-encoding, anything else is converted, with progress shown as it works. Only the finished result is stored, so everyone opening the canvas receives the same prepared file
Everyone sees the same moment of a background video. Playback position is derived from the server's clock rather than started independently on each machine, so someone opening a canvas an hour later sees the same frame as their colleague
A background image, or the background color, remains beneath the video at all times and is shown whenever the video cannot be — while it is still downloading, on a display that cannot decode it, or on a machine that cannot keep up. A canvas never ends up blank
Edge blending for overlapping displays. Blend parameters from screen.xml are now applied at scan-out when Canvus starts, with per-channel gain so color casts in the overlap can be corrected, on both the Linux and Windows driver paths
Canvus reopens the canvases you had open if it closes unexpectedly, instead of starting at the welcome screen with the previous layout to be restored by hand. Shutting down normally still starts a fresh session
Offline license activation is easier to complete: the activation request is now produced as a formatted page you can print or send, and license text pasted back in is accepted in the same form
Canvus Server now checks its database columns when it starts and reports exactly what is missing, instead of failing later with an unclear error. By default this is a warning and does not prevent startup

Bug Fixes

Videos on a canvas show their opening frame again instead of appearing empty until played. On machines using GPU video decoding — which is most of them — a video that had not been started rendered as an empty rectangle, making a canvas full of videos look unfinished
Note text wraps again. Since 26.09.0 text typed into a note ran off the right edge instead of flowing onto the next line, on the Linux, Windows and macOS clients. Notes created on an affected version keep their size; their text re-fits the next time it is edited
Multi-GPU walls render on all installed GPUs again. GPU affinity had been computed but never applied at render context creation, so every window rendered on the primary GPU while the others sat idle. One window per GPU in the screen configuration is required to benefit
The embedded browser keeps its Chromium sandbox enabled on Windows again. A workaround for a Linux-only browser crash was being applied on every platform, disabling the Windows browser sandbox for a problem that cannot occur there
Closing Canvus after a graphics driver stall no longer looks like a freeze. Shutdown waited indefinitely for a stuck render thread, so the application appeared unresponsive and was force-closed after 30 seconds. That wait is now limited and Canvus exits cleanly, recording which thread was stuck
Looping videos no longer drift at the loop point. The restart position is taken from the last frame actually decoded rather than the clip's declared length, which the two do not always agree on
A video's mute setting and its length are stored reliably again. On servers whose database was created recently rather than upgraded, the columns holding these values were missing, so a video could return unmuted after being muted
A certificate whose hostname does not match can now be accepted permanently, instead of prompting on every connection
Canvus Server reads every certificate in the certificate and chain files, rather than only the first, so intermediate certificates are presented correctly
License dialogs no longer trip the internal watchdog. A blocking activation prompt could be mistaken for an unresponsive application and closed
A default configuration file is created for you when none exists, and the packaged template is no longer installed as a system-wide configuration where it could override local settings
Notes and browsers can no longer be resized beyond a supported limit, which previously produced blank or corrupted content at extreme sizes
Each product keeps its own browser session storage, so signing in to a site in one product no longer disturbs the other
The touch ripple effect is sized correctly again on walls, instead of being scaled by the display grid

Canvus 26.07.7

Released on July 2026

Bug Fixes

When activation fails, Canvus now shows the reason reported by the license server — for example "License key not found" for a mistyped key — instead of a general network error that suggested a connection problem
Licenses are now matched to the exact product they were issued for, so a license issued for one product is no longer accepted by another

Canvus 26.07.6

Released on July 2026

Bug Fixes

Multi-file OBJ 3D models (with separate material and texture files) now keep their materials when a canvas is reopened — including on a different machine. The client packages the material bundle together with the model and stores it alongside the canvas, instead of relying on the file still being present at its original location
Canvus now defaults to the dedicated GPU on hybrid-graphics laptops (Intel integrated + NVIDIA/AMD discrete), instead of potentially running on the integrated GPU — a source of rendering instability under heavy canvas use

Canvus 26.07.5

Released on July 2026

New Features and Improvements

3D model rotation gizmo

3D models gained a corner rotation gizmo — a visual handle with separate yaw, pitch, and roll rings — for precise orientation control alongside free-drag rotation. Model roll now also synchronizes to other connected clients (requires a 26.07.5 server or newer), completing full yaw/pitch/roll orientation sync for 3D models

Canvus 26.07.4

Released on July 2026

New Features and Improvements

3D models on the canvas

Drop a 3D model file (GLB, glTF, OBJ, or FBX) onto a canvas to display it as an interactive 3D view
Rotate the model by dragging and zoom with the mouse wheel or a pinch gesture; pin the widget to hold it in place
An auto-rotate toggle keeps the model slowly turning for unattended displays, and a backdrop color picker sets the scene behind it
3D models behave like any other canvas item, with an editable title, a resize handle, full-screen mode, and the standard sidebar
The viewing angle, zoom, and backdrop color are saved with the canvas and synchronized to everyone viewing it (requires a 26.07 server; on older servers the model still displays locally)
Clients older than 26.07.4 can still join a canvas that contains 3D models: they stay connected and show each model as a file placeholder (file name and type icon) instead of the 3D view. Update the client to see the model
Models made of several files — OBJ with material and texture files, or glTF with a separate .bin — load with their materials intact

Bug Fixes

Browser windows no longer get stuck in a reload loop after a page fails to load — the error page could repeatedly try to reload itself, keeping the widget busy; a failed page now shows the error once and reloads only when asked to

Canvus 26.07.3

Released on July 2026

New Features and Improvements

Clearer support logs on capture hardware

Each video capture card is now logged once when it is detected (with its name and resolution) and once when it is removed. The log is no longer flooded with the full capture-card inventory every time a capture source is opened or reopened, which on capture-equipped installations could crowd out the useful log content entirely

Bug Fixes

Local (offline) canvases now report the application's real version instead of a hard-coded older one, so features that check the server version — such as 3D model synchronization — work on local canvases too
On Linux, remote desktop (RDP) connections now work out of the box: the text-processing libraries the RDP engine needs are bundled with the application, and the installer's declared dependencies have been corrected to match what the application actually uses
Canvus now starts on Linux systems that use PipeWire for audio without a PulseAudio compatibility installation

Canvus 26.07.2

Released on July 2026

Bug Fixes

Fixed virtual keyboard textures that could appear blank or flicker when the keyboard first opened, and a synchronization issue in the lock widget

Canvus 26.07.1

Released on July 2026

New Features and Improvements

Run Canvus and Showcase together

Canvus and MultiTaction Showcase can now run on the same machine at the same time. Both products previously shared one browser-engine cache, so whichever started second could fail to open web content; each product now uses its own cache

Bug Fixes

Fixed an intermittent freeze (followed by an automatic watchdog restart) triggered when a connected video capture card re-synchronized its signal — for example when the HDMI source connected to an INOGENI capture device changed resolution or reconnected. A long-standing graphics-synchronization defect could deadlock the rendering pipeline during the video stream's reconfiguration; the synchronization is now correct, and the rendering pipeline additionally recovers gracefully instead of freezing if a similar condition ever occurs
Fixed video broadcast (screen sharing and IP camera streaming to other participants) sometimes failing silently for viewers when the newer WebRTC delivery path failed partway through connecting without falling back. Canvus temporarily uses the previous, proven broadcast path while WebRTC broadcast reliability is finished
Fixed the Linux installer failing to complete on systems where AppArmor isn't active (for example minimal installs or containers) — it no longer requires an active AppArmor service to finish configuring the package

Canvus 26.06

Released on June 2026

New Features and Improvements

Custom pen and note colors

Edit the available pen and note color palettes for each canvas, and reset a canvas back to its default colors at any time
Your chosen colors are saved with the canvas, so every canvas keeps its own palette
Administrators can configure the default palette and starting note color for new canvases through the server configuration
Connectors now always draw using the current pen colors

Hardware video decoding (NVIDIA)

Canvus can now decode video on the GPU using NVIDIA hardware decoding (NVDEC), lowering CPU load and playing more — and higher-resolution — videos smoothly
Off by default: software decoding remains standard, and hardware decoding only engages on machines with a confirmed-healthy NVIDIA GPU
An operator override (the VIDEODISPLAY_FORCE_SOFTWARE_DECODE environment variable) forces software decoding if a particular machine's hardware decoder misbehaves

Live video on relay-free sites

Live video sharing between Canvus clients — live and IP-camera streams, screen-sharing, remote desktop (RDP), and shared browser windows — now works on deployments that do not run the optional video relay service (for example network-restricted, TCP-only sites). A shared stream that previously started on the sender but appeared blank on other clients now falls back automatically to Canvus's built-in streaming path, so a single standard build works on both relay-equipped and TCP-only sites.

Easier license activation

On Windows the activation wizard now appears in front of the always-on-top Canvus and Showcase windows, so it can be completed on video walls
The license field now accepts the newer 2026 key formats, and bundle and suite keys activate against the correct product

Automatic diagnostic reporting

If the application becomes unresponsive for more than 30 seconds, Canvus now records a diagnostic report automatically — simply restart as usual and the report reaches MultiTaction support, with no action needed from the people in the room

Clearer transfer progress

File sizes shown while downloading assets and in the asset-synchronization tooltip now display in human-readable units (KB, MB, or GB as appropriate) instead of always in megabytes

Bug Fixes

"Open in local Canvus" links now open in the Canvus window that is already running, instead of starting a second copy that could close — or crash — your existing session
Canvases containing a video now reopen and export correctly after being closed; video mute state and duration are saved with the canvas, and a canvas saved by a newer client no longer fails to load on an older server
Fixed newly created canvases that could appear blank in the web client or hang in the desktop client; new canvases now save and open correctly
The eraser now removes ink from notes that are attached to a PDF, which previously could not be erased
Hardware-decoded video that previously appeared as a black box now renders correctly
Fixed a crash that could occur when starting a live video broadcast — camera, screen-share, remote desktop, or shared browser — on systems with NVIDIA graphics; video broadcasting now uses software H.264 encoding so it starts reliably across all deployments
The lock indicator on a locked widget is now shown as a badge attached to the widget itself — it sits in the correct stacking order, follows the title bar, disappears when the widget moves off screen, and unlocks reliably
Fixed a freeze on machines with Intel graphics, where Canvus could be killed by its watchdog while uploading images to the graphics card
Fixed a freeze where the drawing thread and the interface thread could block on the same window during a screen refresh, a source of intermittent hangs on the wall
Fixed a crash and occasional visual glitch that could occur when widget styles were re-applied during layout
On Windows, fixed a crash that could occur while a crash report was being captured, so diagnostic reports are recorded reliably
Workspace state saving now retries when another program (such as an antivirus or backup agent) temporarily locks the workspace file, and records which program held the lock, instead of silently skipping the save
Asset synchronization now recovers automatically when a file transfer is restarted after a connection problem, removing repeating "asset error" conditions on multi-server installations
The Windows installer no longer restarts the machine without warning during a silent install

Canvus 26.05

Released on May 2026

New Features and Improvements

License activation wizard

New guided activation wizard walks you through licensing Canvus on first launch and whenever no valid license is present
Enter an activation key to activate online in a single step, or choose offline activation if the machine has no internet access
Request a free trial directly from the wizard without leaving the application
When your current license is inside its 14-day post-expiry grace period, the wizard reappears as a renewal reminder with a Skip option so you can keep working while you arrange renewal; when there is no usable license, activation is required to continue
A renewal reminder is also shown automatically when your license is within 7 days of expiry

Offline activation

Activate Canvus on machines with no internet access using a generated request file
The wizard (or the --create-license-request <key> command-line option) writes an MT-Canvus-offline-request.html file to your home folder (Documents on Windows) containing the upload-portal link for that key
Upload the request file through the portal to receive a license file, then complete activation offline
Offline request files are valid for 7 days after generation

License verification

Canvus now periodically re-verifies its active license with the license server in the background
If the server cannot be reached for 7 consecutive days, a notice prompts you to reconnect and restart, or switch to offline activation — your current session keeps working in the meantime

Connectors are now opt-in

Connector points on widgets are hidden by default and turned on per widget with a new connectors button in the widget sidebar
This restores the original opt-in connector behavior; connector points no longer appear automatically whenever a widget is activated
Available on note, image, video, PDF, and browser widgets

Bug Fixes

Fixed the close (X) button on the web-client sign-in surface so it is clearly visible and positioned in the top-right corner of the login window

Command-line options

--activate <activation key> — activate a license online from the command line
--create-license-request <activation key> — generate an offline activation request file
--activation-wizard — open the activation wizard even when a valid license is present
--disable-dialogs — suppress native popup dialogs, including license wizards (useful for unattended wall installations)

Canvus 26.4.1

Bug Fixes

Added support for custom names for video capture inputs in mt-canvus.ini. On Linux, configure the V4L2 device name without the /dev/ prefix, for example [video-input:video2] with name=Webcam.
Fixed video input listings so they refresh when a configured capture-device name changes.
Fixed a stale-pointer issue in anchor page deduplication that could cause crashes or content corruption.

Canvus 26.4.0

Released on April 2026

Switched to calendar versioning: version numbers now follow YY.M.PATCH format (26.4.0 = April 2026)
Backwards compatible with 3.4.x in both directions: 26.4.0 clients work against 3.4.x servers (26.4-only features stay dormant until the server is upgraded), and 3.4.x clients work against 26.4.0 servers (retaining existing functionality without 26.4-only features). Some perpetual licenses are tied to a specific major version and may need to be re-issued — contact sales@multitaction.com if validation fails after upgrade.
mt-canvus-server is now released as a separate product with its own source repository and manual. See the Canvus Server Manual for server-side release notes, install guides, and administration topics; the Canvus Client Manual now covers the desktop client only.

Upgrading from 3.4.x

See Upgrading the Canvus client from 3.x to 26.x for upgrade requirements and fleet coordination guidance.

New Features and Improvements

Canvas Macros

Bulk operations for managing content across your canvas, accessible from the finger menu
Move, copy, or clear entire collections of widgets between the current viewport and named zones with a single tap
A zone picker shows live thumbnail previews of all zones so you always know exactly where content is going
Additional one-tap actions: pin all, unpin all, delete batch, and undo the last deletion

Anchor Pages

Quickly structure your canvas into organized, navigable zones from the anchor panel
Create 2×2 through 5×5 grids of zones that tile the full canvas in one tap
Choose from three zone numbering patterns — reading order, snake, and spiral — to match how you present content
Auto-created zones can be cleared in a single action without affecting any manually created zones

Connector Follow

Navigate linked content without losing your place
Every connector on the canvas gains a tap target at each end that instantly pans the viewport to the connected widget
Works in both directions, so you can traverse relationships forward and back as naturally as following a link

Lock Widget

Freeze individual widgets in place while keeping them fully visible
A lock icon in the widget title bar toggles input transparency on and off — touches pass through to content underneath when locked, while the widget itself stays on screen
Tap the lock icon again to resume normal interaction

Looping Video

Add a loop toggle directly to any video widget on the canvas
A loop button appears alongside the existing playback controls
When active, video restarts seamlessly at the end, eliminating the visible pause that standard looping produces

Spatial Intelligence

Intelligent layout operations for the content in your current viewport, accessible from the finger menu
Arrange widgets into a uniform grid, sorted by position, color, title, or recency
Group content into kanban columns by color, sequence it as a timeline, or run a force-directed layout to untangle connected widgets
Push overlapping widgets apart without restructuring everything else

Browser-based canvas access (web client)

New browser-based canvas viewer for collaborators who can't or don't want to install the desktop client — open a canvas from a share link or QR code directly in the browser
Session bridging keeps sign-in consistent between the legacy dashboard and the new web client; signing out of one signs out of the other
Guest sessions opened via share links are treated as authenticated for the purposes of the canvas they were shared into
See Browser-based canvas access for deployment details and supported features

Video streaming (WebRTC)

Real-time video — screen share, IP camera streams, embedded browser capture, and RDP capture — now streams end-to-end over WebRTC with H.264, replacing the legacy transport
Hardware H.264 encoding is used where available (NVENC on NVIDIA, Quick Sync on Intel, VAAPI on Linux), reducing CPU usage at 4K30 and improving smoothness under load
Lower latency and smoother playback across all connected clients and browser viewers

Embedded browser

Logged-in users now get a persistent disk-backed cache, so sessions and cookies survive canvas reloads
Guest sessions use an in-memory, incognito-style context that is cleared when the canvas closes
New browser/cef-disable-features INI option lets administrators disable specific Chromium experimental features for SSO and corporate-login edge cases
Improved isolation between concurrent browser widgets on the same canvas prevents state leaking between sessions

Configuration & email

New in-app Configuration page — server and client settings are grouped into nine collapsible INI sections within the Settings menu, with typed fields (toggle, number, text, path, list, password), restart-required indicators, and admin-only lock-out on the Collaboration and Display sections
Default embedded SMTP — outbound email (notifications, reports, invitations) works out of the box with no administrator SMTP configuration; administrators can still point the server at their own relay. See Default SMTP tradeoffs for delivery-reputation considerations
Example mt-canvus.ini is now installed to the standard location on both Linux (/etc/MultiTaction/canvus/) and Windows

RDP

RDP connections now switch the port inside the host field (host=host:port); the separate port setting has been deprecated
RDP widgets now connect in full-desktop mode and share a named drive (\\tsclient\AssetFromCanvus) for files pushed to the remote session; this fixes stale-pixel and compositing issues seen in the previous RAIL mode

Export to disk and USB

Export to USB now fails loudly when there is insufficient disk space, instead of silently producing a partial export
Export to the root of a disk now works and creates a timestamped Canvus-Export-yyyy-mm-dd-HH_mm_ss/ subfolder

Icons

Icon refresh across the entire application using Font Awesome 7 Pro+
The previous custom canvus-icon-font has been removed; all 11 custom glyphs have been replaced with Font Awesome equivalents for a more consistent and polished look

Linux and installer

canvus:// URI handler is now registered on Linux, so clicking a canvas link in a browser opens the desktop client directly
AppArmor profile is now shipped with the Canvus .deb package on Ubuntu 24.04
Installer now uninstalls the previous version before installing, so upgrades on Windows are one step
Magewell capture card driver is bundled with the installer; a separate driver step is no longer required
Application logs are now created when the client is launched from the desktop shortcut or app launcher

Code signing

Windows builds are now signed with Azure Trusted Signing, replacing the previous mt-token-unlocker flow. Installers and binaries continue to be recognized by SmartScreen and enterprise signing policies

Plugin SDK (for plugin authors)

New standalone canvus-plugins-sdk Conan package replaces the prior "clone all of canvus-app" workflow for building plugins; includes plugin API headers plus required libraries
Plugin SDK is now versioned on the Canvus release train — 26.4.x (was 3.4.x)
Plugin dependency version ranges widened for the 26.04 cycle to make it easier to keep plugins in sync with the main product. Developer-site documentation covers the full API change-log

Bug Fixes

Fixed canvas background color picker incorrectly applying transparency when setting a solid background color