# SDL release-3.4.0 — 3.4.0

- Product: SDL (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/sdl)
- Vendor: SDL
- Date: 2026-01-01
- Version: release-3.4.0
- Original notes: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases/tag/release-3.4.0
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/sdl/releases/release-3.4.0

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — SDL_CreateAnimatedCursor() to create animated color cursors
- **added** — SDL_HINT_MOUSE_DPI_SCALE_CURSORS to automatically scale cursors based on the display scale
- **added** — SDL_SetWindowProgressState(), SDL_SetWindowProgressValue(), SDL_GetWindowProgressState(), and SDL_GetWindowProgressValue() to show progress in the window's taskbar icon on Windows and Linux
- **added** — GPU device creation properties SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_CLIP_DISTANCE_BOOLEAN, SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_DEPTH_CLAMPING_BOOLEAN, SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_INDIRECT_DRAW_FIRST_INSTANCE_BOOLEAN, SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_ANISOTROPY_BOOLEAN, and SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_D3D12_ALLOW_FEWER_RESOURCE_SLOTS_BOOLEAN to enable the GPU API on older hardware
- **added** — SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_VULKAN_OPTIONS_POINTER to enable configuring Vulkan features when creating a GPU device
- **added** — SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_VULKAN_REQUIRE_HARDWARE_ACCELERATION_BOOLEAN to allow requiring Vulkan hardware acceleration when creating a GPU device
- **added** — SDL_GetGPUDeviceProperties() to query information from a GPU device
- **added** — SDL_GetPixelFormatFromGPUTextureFormat() and SDL_GetGPUTextureFormatFromPixelFormat()
- **added** — SDL_CreateGPURenderer() and SDL_GetGPURendererDevice() to create a 2D renderer for use with GPU rendering
- **added** — SDL_CreateGPURenderState(), SDL_SetGPURenderStateFragmentUniforms(), SDL_SetGPURenderState(), and SDL_DestroyGPURenderState() to use fragment shaders with a GPU 2D renderer
- **added** — SDL_PROP_TEXTURE_CREATE_GPU_TEXTURE_POINTER to create a 2D texture from an existing GPU texture
- **added** — SDL_PROP_TEXTURE_GPU_TEXTURE_POINTER to get the GPU texture from a 2D texture when using the GPU 2D renderer
- **added** — Support for YUV textures and HDR colorspaces to the GPU 2D renderer
- **added** — Support for textures with palettes, and SDL_GetTexturePalette() and SDL_SetTexturePalette() to interact with them
- **added** — SDL_RenderTexture9GridTiled() to do tiled instead of stretched 9-grid texture rendering
- **added** — SDL_GetDefaultTextureScaleMode() and SDL_SetDefaultTextureScaleMode() to set the texture scale mode for new textures
- **added** — SDL_GetRenderTextureAddressMode() and SDL_SetRenderTextureAddressMode() to change the texture addressing mode
- **added** — SDL_TEXTURE_ADDRESS_WRAP to allow wrapping of textures if the renderer has SDL_PROP_RENDERER_TEXTURE_WRAPPING_BOOLEAN set

Thanks to all the people who have contributed, SDL 3.4.0 is now available!

In addition to lots of bug fixes and general system improvements, this release has some major themes of improved interoperability between the 3D GPU API and the 2D rendering API, improved Emscripten support, improved pen handling, and native support for PNG images.

Here is a full list of the API changes since the last release:
General:
* Added SDL_CreateAnimatedCursor() to create animated color cursors
* Added SDL_HINT_MOUSE_DPI_SCALE_CURSORS to automatically scale cursors based on the display scale
* Added SDL_SetWindowProgressState(), SDL_SetWindowProgressValue(), SDL_GetWindowProgressState(), and SDL_GetWindowProgressValue() to show progress in the window's taskbar icon on Windows and Linux
* Added GPU device creation properties to enable the GPU API on older hardware if you're not using these features:
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_CLIP_DISTANCE_BOOLEAN
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_DEPTH_CLAMPING_BOOLEAN
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_INDIRECT_DRAW_FIRST_INSTANCE_BOOLEAN
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_FEATURE_ANISOTROPY_BOOLEAN
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_D3D12_ALLOW_FEWER_RESOURCE_SLOTS_BOOLEAN
* Added SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_VULKAN_OPTIONS_POINTER to enable configuring Vulkan features when creating a GPU device
* Added SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_VULKAN_REQUIRE_HARDWARE_ACCELERATION_BOOLEAN to allow requiring Vulkan hardware acceleration when creating a GPU device
* Added SDL_GetGPUDeviceProperties() to query information from a GPU device:
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_NAME_STRING
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_DRIVER_NAME_STRING
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_DRIVER_VERSION_STRING
  - SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_DRIVER_INFO_STRING
* Added SDL_GetPixelFormatFromGPUTextureFormat() and SDL_GetGPUTextureFormatFromPixelFormat()
* Added SDL_CreateGPURenderer() and SDL_GetGPURendererDevice() to create a 2D renderer for use with GPU rendering.
* Added SDL_CreateGPURenderState(), SDL_SetGPURenderStateFragmentUniforms(), SDL_SetGPURenderState(), and SDL_DestroyGPURenderState() to use fragment shaders with a GPU 2D renderer
* Added SDL_PROP_TEXTURE_CREATE_GPU_TEXTURE_POINTER to create a 2D texture from an existing GPU texture
* Added SDL_PROP_TEXTURE_GPU_TEXTURE_POINTER to get the GPU texture from a 2D texture when using the GPU 2D renderer
* Added support for YUV textures and HDR colorspaces to the GPU 2D renderer
* Added support for textures with palettes, and SDL_GetTexturePalette() and SDL_SetTexturePalette() to interact with them
* Added SDL_RenderTexture9GridTiled() to do tiled instead of stretched 9-grid texture rendering
* Added SDL_GetDefaultTextureScaleMode() and SDL_SetDefaultTextureScaleMode() to set the texture scale mode for new textures
* Added SDL_GetRenderTextureAddressMode() and SDL_SetRenderTextureAddressMode() to change the texture addressing mode
* Added SDL_TEXTURE_ADDRESS_WRAP to allow wrapping of textures if the renderer has SDL_PROP_RENDERER_TEXTURE_WRAPPING_BOOLEAN set
* The default YUV colorspace is BT.601 limited range, for compatibility with SDL2
* Added SDL_SCALEMODE_PIXELART as an improved scaling algorithm for pixel art without introducing blurring
* Added SDL_FLIP_HORIZONTAL_AND_VERTICAL to flip a surface both horizontally and vertically
* Added SDL_LoadPNG(), SDL_LoadPNG_IO(), SDL_SavePNG(), and SDL_SavePNG_IO() to load and save PNG images
* Added SDL_LoadSurface() and SDL_LoadSurface_IO() to detect BMP and PNG formats and load them as surfaces
* Added SDL_PROP_SURFACE_ROTATION_FLOAT to indicate the rotation needed to display camera images upright
* Added SDL_RotateSurface() to create a rotated copy of a surface
* SDL_EVENT_WINDOW_EXPOSED now sets data1 to true if it is sent during live resizing
* Added SDL_EVENT_DISPLAY_USABLE_BOUNDS_CHANGED, which is sent when the usable desktop bounds change
* Added SDL_EVENT_SCREEN_KEYBOARD_SHOWN, which is sent when the on-screen keyboard

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases/tag/release-3.4.0]_