Discover Qt’s new, imperative 2D rendering API, Qt Canvas Painter, its history, main usage, and future plans.

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Qt Canvas Painter is a new imperative 2D rendering API built on QRhi that aims to combine performance, productivity, and modern features. Based on the HTML Canvas 2D context specification and inspired by NanoVG/QNanoPainter, it provides hardware-accelerated rendering across Vulkan, Metal, Direct3D, and OpenGL. The API supports both Qt Quick (via QQuickCPainterItem) and Qt Widgets (via QCPainterWidget), offering better performance than QQuickPaintedItem while maintaining familiar Canvas 2D APIs. Currently available as a tech preview in Qt 6.11, it lacks some 2D context features like filters, dashed strokes, shadows, and shape clipping, but adds new capabilities for modern UIs. Future plans include a new Quick Canvas backend for feature parity between C++ and QML JavaScript APIs.

2D Rendering - Introducing Qt Canvas Painter

The Steps to Great Imperative 2D Rendering