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LibrePCB 2.1.0 Released

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@ubruhin
May 19, 2026

Today we released LibrePCB 2.1.0, bringing cross-probing, UI themes, 3D shading, a new project library manager, automatic library updates, and many more improvements! Check out the highlights and the full changelog below.

Highlights

Cross-Probing & Net Highlighting (#1748, #1790)

LibrePCB now supports automatic, bidirectional cross-probing between schematics and boards. Whenever you select components, nets, pins or pads in one editor, the corresponding objects are highlighted in the other one, while unrelated objects are dimmed out. In addition, it is now possible to search for nets in schematics and boards — using the same dimming for unrelated objects — making it even easier to inspect and navigate complex designs!

Themes & Color Schemes (#1731, #1760)

As LibrePCB 2.0 was the first release with our new UI framework Slint, we had to focus on implementing all the basic functionality and thus keeping the UI simple. Therefore we made the decision to initially provide only a dark theme (which was not even a very nice one). Now we finally invested more time into the UI theming, resulting in an improved dark theme and a new light theme. The theme is automatically chosen according to your system theme, but of course you can manually override it in the workspace settings.

ui themes

The colors of 2D canvases (i.e. schematics, boards etc.) remain independent of the UI theme to allow configuring them individually. However, the configuration of those colors has been reworked as well and now comes with several built-in color schemes. For example the dark theme experience can now be improved by simply choosing a dark schematic color scheme. In addition, it is now much easier to create custom color schemes since any color modifications are instantly applied to the opened editors.

2D Board Flip & 3D Shading (#1709, #1764)

flip view

The board editor now allows flipping the 2D canvas upside-down to view the board from the bottom instead of "looking through" the board from the top. This simplifies routing the bottom board side and avoids accidentally grabbing objects on the top layer since not only the rendering is inverted, but also the "hit test" on a click — when viewing the board from the bottom, objects on the bottom layer are stacked above objects on the top layer.

3d shading

Another enhancement regarding visualization is the 3D viewer, which now applies shading to the surface of the PCB and the 3D models. A small change, but still very useful since it finally makes edges and holes of 3D models visible and generally leads to a much more realistic rendering.

Project Library Manager (#1788)

project library manager

This release introduces a new Project Library Manager to give you a clearer overview of the library elements bundled in a project. It lists all bundled elements, shows which workspace library they come from, and compares their bundled and latest versions.

If library elements are not found in any workspace library, you can now save them from the project directly into a workspace library. This is especially useful for projects you received from someone else or migrated from EAGLE.

The old Project Library Updater is still used to update the project library elements, but the goal is to also integrate this functionality into the new library manager in a future release.

Device Editor Improvements (#1780, #1768, #1769, #1772)

The device editor gained some new features to increase productivity:

  • The dependent package and component can be clicked to open them in a new tab

  • The pinout is now visualized in the component preview, simplifying its review

  • The previews can be zoomed & panned to inspect them in detail

  • A measure tool allows you to verify whether the selected package really has the desired dimensions

device editor

Add Planes at Lightning Speed (#1745)

Another small but useful productivity improvement has been implemented for the board editor. Adding copper planes is a very common task, while usually they span just the whole board, thus it seems unnecessary to draw their outline manually. For this typical case, planes can therefore now be added with a single click — which also automatically selects the next lower layer, so you can just continue clicking for each layer. After reaching the bottom layer, the tool exits automatically.

Automatic Library Updates (#1776)

library updates

So far, the libraries installed through the library manager had to be kept up to date by installing the updates manually. However, this was unnecessarily cumbersome — since those libraries are installed read-only, there is no harm in letting LibrePCB update those libraries automatically, so LibrePCB 2.1 will do this now for you. It checks for updates once per day (like LibrePCB 2.0 already did), and installs the updates automatically if there are any.

Note that in some special cases — when the update requires uninstalling any libraries or installing additional libraries — a manual confirmation will still be required to avoid any surprises.

This feature can be configured in the workspace settings. You can choose any of Disable Completely, Check Only (LibrePCB 2.0 behavior), Check & Notify (Popup), and Check & Install.

Changelog

Schematic & Board Editor:

  • Implement automatic cross-probing between schematic & board (#1748)

  • Implement project library manager (#1788)

  • Support searching for nets in schematics & boards (#1790)

  • Support flipping 2D board view to bottom side (#1709)

  • Show properties of selected components, devices, pads etc. (#1743)

  • Support drawing arcs in board polygon/zone tools (#1770)

  • Support auto-adding planes to boards (#1745)

  • Support placing remaining component gates (#1791)

  • Indicate forced net name mismatches in schematics (#1754)

  • Add DRC check for board outline intersections (#1811)

  • Support 'F' shortcut to flip layer while drawing trace (#1808)

  • Hide unnecessary information in component properties dialog (#1753)

  • Draw symbol crosses only when selected (#1736)

  • Fix missing "save?" message box in project library updater (#1724)

  • Fix outdated ERC messages count in sidebar (#1734)

  • Fix missing Ctrl+Shift+L shortcut in schematic editor (72650b08)

Library Editor:

  • Require explicit unlock to make breaking changes in library elements (#1777)

  • Device editor: Support measure tool in package preview (#1780)

  • Device editor: Visualize pinout in the component/package previews (#1769)

  • Device editor: Support opening dependent component & package (#1772)

  • Device editor: Support zoom & pan in component/package previews (#1768)

  • Symbol/package editors: Snap cursor to existing vertices (#1752)

  • Package editor: Explicitly make newly added 3D models visible (#1730)

  • Category check: Warn about invalid parent category (#1738)

  • Fix unreliable keyboard shortcuts in library editor tabs (#1766)

  • Fix approvals not updated after symbol/package reload (#1706)

  • Fix crash in library tab due to categories with endless recursion (#1737)

Import/Export:

  • EAGLE project import: Add support for schematic buses (#1762)

  • EAGLE library import: Auto-add "EAGLE Import" category (#1779)

  • KiCad library import: Auto-add "KiCad Import" category (#1781)

User Interface:

  • Rework/improve dark theme & add light theme (#1731)

  • Add dark color schemes for schematic editor & 3D views (#1760)

  • Implement shading in 3D views (#1764)

  • Support moving tabs to other windows through context menu (#1746)

  • When closing/moving tabs, switch back to previous tab (#1747)

  • When closing a library tab, ask for saving modifications (#1774)

  • Automatically close library when closing its last tab (#1775)

  • Memorize & restore side panel page on tab switch (#1810)

  • Support resizing side panel (#1783)

  • Accept user input "mil" as unit "mils" (#1716)

  • Keep auto-fit in 2D views active until manual zoom/pan (#1773)

  • Limit zoom in 2D canvas to a reasonable range (#1704)

  • Support rotating 3D views with keyboard shortcuts (51020bb0)

  • Swap buttons for new symbol / new package in library tab (1bdd2443)

  • Do not auto-correct invalid pad/via drill/size properties (#1717)

  • Fix schematic/board tab titles not matching documents panel items (60067cc1)

  • Fix unintentionally focusing search field (f8e3d319)

  • Fix focus issue after closing a modal dialog (#1800)

Miscellaneous:

  • Automatically update remote libraries (4 configurable modes) (#1776)

  • Support loading semi-transparent STEP models (#1755)

  • Support changing opacity of 2D background image (#1708)

  • Trim whitespace around empty attribute substitutions (#1807)

  • Make default grid style configuration independent of themes (#1757)

  • Split themes configuration into 3 separate color schemes (#1758)

  • Apply color scheme modifications immediately (live preview) (#1749)

  • Support switching application language at runtime (#1721)

  • Do not change locale settings when switching language (#1723)

  • List system locale in "About LibrePCB" details (#1733)

  • FreeBSD: Use sysctl() to determine process name for file locks (#1806)

  • Add workaround for problems with libfreetype 2.14 (#1799)

  • Fix custom keyboard shortcuts not working (95758687)

  • Fix offset when pasting objects from other tabs (#1735)

Building/Packaging/Deployment:

  • Update parseagle to get rid of QtXML dependency (#1763)

  • Linux: Support disabling desktop integration by environment variable (8a92ff80)

  • AppImage: Update releases to Qt 6.11.1 (#1792)

  • AppImage: Fix system theme detection & native file dialogs (#1778)

  • MacOS: Update x86_64 releases to Qt 6.5.8 (#1787)

  • MacOS: Set up code signing for x86_64 releases (OSSign/#6)

  • OpenBSD: Fix linking error of librepcb and librepcb-cli (#1702)

  • Fix build error with OCCT 8.0.0 (#1804)

  • Fix outdated requirements & installation instructions (830054f4)

Internal:

  • Implement low-level math functions in Rust with libm (#1739)

  • Implement Length, Angle, Point, Vertex and VertexVec in Rust (ff168c01, e9d1a5e2)

  • Add Rust unit tests to reach 100% coverage & enforce it on CI (#1771)

  • Set up and enforce static C++ code analysis with clang-tidy on CI (#1785)

  • Enforce strict coding style & spell check on CI (#1719, #1784)

  • Support using rust-core without FFI in external projects (#1713)

  • Refactor schematic text rendering without using QStaticText (#1765)

  • Migrate all remaining CI jobs from Azure Pipelines to GitHub Actions (#1786)

Credits

Also a big thank you to our sponsors and to the community helping us with translations, pull requests, donations and other contributions! 🎉

External code contributors of this release: @Girish4489, @stoeckmann, @benoit-canet, @melak

Download

The release can be downloaded for all major operating systems from our download page.

If you like LibrePCB, please consider making a small donation to support the ongoing development.
Thank you!