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Canvus Server release notes

For Canvus Server changes from 26.4.0 onward. Server changes prior to 26.4.0 are in the Canvus Client release notes, where Client and Server were versioned together.

Canvus Server 26.05

Released on May 2026

New Features and Improvements

Annotations in the web client

  • The web client now supports drawing and erasing annotations on canvas content. Switching to Annotate mode lets users draw freehand strokes on any widget (notes, images, browsers, videos, PDFs, anchors, tables) and on the canvas plane itself. Erase removes individual strokes with a tap. Strokes persist across reloads and replicate to other clients in real time, the same way widget edits do.
  • The pen and eraser tools show a live cursor and a size indicator while drawing, with tool-size settings applied as you draw.
  • Annotations can also be created and retrieved programmatically through the Canvus REST API.

Folder view: per-canvas and per-folder action menu

  • Every tile in the web folder view now carries a three-dot action button that opens Share, Rename, Move, Duplicate, Details, Show QR code, and Delete — plus Open in local Canvus and Copy link for canvases. The trash folder collapses to a single Empty-trash action.
  • Tapping a canvas tile no longer opens it immediately: the first tap highlights the tile and shows an Open button, the second tap confirms. Folders remain single-tap.

Bug Fixes

  • Public canvas links no longer briefly flash the login form before showing the canvas. Unauthenticated visitors opening a canvas shared as "anyone with the link can edit" now see it immediately, even on slower connections.
  • "Open in local Canvus" from the folder menu now hands off to the desktop app correctly; it previously built a malformed link that could cause connection timeouts.
  • Folder management fixes: the Move dialog now hides destination folders the user only has view access to; Duplicate copies correctly; the Details dialog shows the parent folder's name instead of a numeric id; subfolder navigation under "My Canvases" keeps the correct sidebar entry highlighted; and browser-back from a canvas reliably returns to the folder view.
  • Email-confirmation links sent during user registration and email-change flows now work end-to-end in the web client; previously some links resolved to a placeholder page and verification did not complete.
  • Shift+drag lasso selection now shows a visual rubber-band rectangle as you drag, and nested widgets inside scaled or translated parents are now selectable via lasso.
  • The server health check now detects both crashed and wedged server processes, with faster failure detection (about 90 seconds instead of 150). Health-check requests now include timeouts so they cannot hang on a wedged server.

Canvus Server 26.4.0

Released on April 2026

  • Switched to calendar versioning: version numbers now follow YY.M.PATCH format (26.4.0 = April 2026)
  • mt-canvus-server is now a separate product with its own source repository, release notes context, and manual. The Canvus Server Manual is the authoritative reference for server operators; the Canvus Client Manual now covers the desktop client only
  • 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.

Upgrading from 3.4.x

See Upgrading to 26.4.0 for upgrade requirements and fleet coordination guidance.

New Features and Improvements

Containerised deployment is now the supported model

  • Canvus Server 26.4.0 ships as a set of Linux container images; containerised deployment is the recommended model for new installations
  • Deployment is composed of three containers:
    • canvus-combined — the Canvus server binary, REST API, web client, and administration dashboard
    • canvus-postgres — PostgreSQL 17 with the Canvus schema
    • canvus-media — mediasoup-based Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) for WebRTC media routing and HLS transcoding
  • Supported on Linux (native Podman) with Podman Desktop on Windows and macOS for evaluation and single-server setups
  • Images are published to docker.multitaction.com; a read-only deploy token is available for end-user pulls
  • DRM / licence enforcement is active in the 26.4.0 container images — deployments must supply a valid Canvus licence

Browser-based canvas access (web client)

  • New browser-based canvas viewer lets collaborators open a canvas from a share link or QR code directly in a browser, without installing the desktop client
  • Delivered through a new web-proxy process inside canvus-combined that also bridges sign-in and sign-out between the legacy dashboard and the new web client
  • Share-link guest sessions are now treated as authenticated for the canvas they were shared into
  • See Browser-based canvas access

WebRTC video streaming

  • Video — screen share, IP camera streams, embedded browser capture, and RDP capture — is now routed end-to-end over WebRTC via the canvus-media SFU, with H.264 codec and hardware-accelerated encode/decode where available
  • New [webrtc] INI section and CANVUS_WEBRTC_ENABLED / CANVUS_WEBRTC_MEDIA_URL environment variables control server-side signaling relay
  • WebRTC is enabled by default in 26.4.0 container deployments
  • UDP port range 40000-40100 must be reachable by clients that participate in media streaming

Multi-site

  • Cross-server permission checks are now namespace-aware, ensuring that owners from a federated site are validated against the correct namespace rather than the local user directory
  • WebRTC signaling relay between federated sites routes video through each site's canvus-media instance

Backup and restore

  • The backup/restore engine has been extracted into a dedicated canvus-backup library, shared between the server binary and future migration tooling
  • Archive format and mt-canvus-server --backup / --restore CLI flags are unchanged; 26.4.0 can restore archives produced by 3.4.x

Migration from 3.4.x bare-metal

  • A new command-line tool, mtcs-migrate, ships alongside 26.4.0 to assist with bare-metal → container migration
  • See Migration for the recommended procedure

SAML authentication

  • SAML SSO login now works end-to-end in the 26.4.0 web client. Administrators who have configured SAML (including Microsoft Entra) can sign in via the "Login with SSO" button and land directly in the application after IdP authentication completes
  • Added [saml] idp-cert-file= INI key: operators can now supply the IdP's signing certificate as a PEM file. This supports Identity Providers that sign SAML responses but omit <KeyInfo> from the signature — a spec-permitted behaviour that the previous fingerprint-based path could not handle. When set, idp-cert-fingerprint is ignored. See SAML IdP Certificate File
  • The SAML Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL is now honored from the [saml] acs-url= key in mt-canvus-server.ini. Deployments behind a load balancer or reverse proxy that need to advertise an ACS URL distinct from external-url can set this key; the IdP-facing metadata, /v1/server-config response, and the bundled web-proxy will all use it. When the key is empty (the default), the ACS URL is derived from external-url + /users/login/saml/callback

QR code sign-in

  • QR code sign-in now has a copy-URL button (chain-link icon in the bottom-right corner of the QR). Click it to copy the sign-in URL to the clipboard and complete the handshake in a new browser tab without a second device
  • Switching between Password, SAML, and QR Code on the sign-in dialog now clears any error message left over from the previous method

Web client

  • The web client hamburger menu (≡ button in the title bar) now includes Upload entries for images, videos, and PDFs. Editors can upload files directly to the active canvas from the title bar on desktop and tablet, providing a discoverable upload path alongside drag-and-drop

Administration and dashboard

  • Dashboard now rejects empty canvas and folder names in the create dialogs rather than producing unnamed resources

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed QR code sign-in: a 90-second TTL on the desktop-side QR token and a missing session-cookie save on the mint endpoint combined to make "QR code expired" the most likely outcome of every attempt. The TTL is back at ten minutes (matching the 3.4 dashboard) and the mint response now reliably issues the desktop session cookie
  • Fixed a container-entrypoint race that could restart the web-proxy and dashboard twice and crash-loop the combined container
  • Fixed a regression where crash diagnostics from background processes were swallowed instead of surfaced in container logs

Canvus Server 3.4

Released on March 4, 2026 - Added container-based deployment for Canvus Server using Podman/Docker, replacing the bare-metal Linux installation - Added single compose file deployment --- one command to start both the server and PostgreSQL database - Added cross-platform server support for Linux (native Podman), Windows (Podman Desktop), and macOS (Podman Desktop) - Added integrated web dashboard in the server container, removing the need for separate dashboard installation - Added automatic self-signed HTTPS certificate generation on first startup - Added automatic HTTP to HTTPS redirect - Added support for custom SSL certificates via volume mount - Added compose file download from https://canvus-downloads.multitaction.com/server/3.4.x/podman-compose.yml - Added configurable HTTPS port and admin credentials via environment variables - Added persistent data storage via host-mounted volumes under /canvus-data/ - Added container health checks for both server and database services - Added install guides for Linux, Windows, and macOS