Changes in 4.0

The primary goal of Processing 4.0 is to keep your code running for a long time. Between new OS updates and restrictions, hardware changes, and the shifting Java platform and its licensing, it's necessary to make significant modifications behind the scenes.

Changes in each 4.0 release:

• Click here for information about what has changed between each 4.0 alpha and beta release.

Larger changes in 4.0:

• We're using Java 17 instead of Java 8. This is a significant shift, and may cause things to break. We're doing our best to minimize that. For most people, it will seem like nothing is different.
• In beta 3, there's a major update to support themes in the UI. Read more about it at the link above, or here.
• It's possible that some Library, Mode, or Tool contributions won't work with this release. We recommend using a separate sketchbook folder for your Processing 4 projects, so that you can install Libraries, Modes, and Tools that you know will work properly.
• There will be no 32-bit support, except for on the Raspberry Pi. The supported platforms will be Windows 10 (64-bit), Linux (Ubuntu 20.04, 64-bit), and macOS Big Sur and Monterey.

You can also read about the changes in 3.x, or changes in 2.x and earlier.