Published August 5, 2026 | Version v0.9.0a1
Software Open

napari: a multi-dimensional image viewer for Python

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
  • 2. Harvard Medical School
  • 3. napari; University of Warsaw, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics, and Mechanics
  • 4. Monash eResearch Centre, Monash University
  • 5. The Jackson Laboratory
  • 6. napari
  • 7. MRC-LMB
  • 8. Monash University
  • 9. Iber Lab - ETH Zürich
  • 10. Quansight
  • 11. Quansight Labs
  • 12. European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Genome Biology Unit, Heidelberg, Germany
  • 13. University of Minnesota — Twin Cities
  • 14. Willing Consulting
  • 15. Kyoto University
  • 16. Chan Zuckerberg Biohub
  • 17. Leibniz-IPHT, Jena, Germany
  • 18. iLABS, Inc.
  • 19. INRAE, Nantes, France
  • 20. Harvard Medical School, BIDMC
  • 21. EPFL Center for Imaging
  • 22. SETI Institute/NASA ARC
  • 23. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
  • 24. University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 25. Heidelberg University, Germany
  • 26. University of Colorado Anschutz
  • 27. Laboratory for Optics and Biosciences, Ecole Polytechnique, INSERM, CNRS, Palaiseau, France
  • 28. Unaffiliated
  • 29. Imaging Methods Core Facility at Biocev, Charles University
  • 30. Flemish Institute for Biotechnology
  • 31. Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), Basel (Switzerland)
  • 32. EMBL Heidelberg, Germany
  • 33. Pioneering Research Institute, RIKEN
  • 34. University of Minnesota
  • 35. University of California, Irvine
  • 36. Dartmouth College
  • 37. Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • 38. Ramona Optics Inc, Durham, North Carolina, USA
  • 39. Biohub, San Francisco
  • 40. University College London
  • 41. The University of Tokyo / LPIXEL Inc.
  • 42. Naval Nuclear Laboratory
  • 43. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 44. Calico Life Sciences LLC
  • 45. Universitätsmedizin Greifswald
  • 46. Kobe University
  • 47. Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation
  • 48. UCL & The Alan Turing Institute
  • 49. HHMI Janelia Research Campus
  • 50. EMBL Heidelberg
  • 51. MetaCell
  • 52. Delft University of Technology
  • 53. Apex Systems
  • 54. Sainsbury Wellcome Centre - University College London
  • 55. University of California, Los Angeles
  • 56. University Hospital Würzburg - Institute of Neuroradiology
  • 57. University of Oregon
  • 58. Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  • 59. Algarve Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR)
  • 60. Yikes LLC
  • 61. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Stellenbosch University
  • 62. EPFL
  • 63. Brown University
  • 64. Translucence Biosystems
  • 65. NanoString Technologies, Inc.
  • 66. European Bioinformatics Institute - European Molecular Biology Laboratory
  • 67. Oregon Health & Science University
  • 68. University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • 69. Mangalmay Institute of Management & Technology
  • 70. Indiana Wesleyan University
  • 71. AI lab for Living Technologies, University Medical Centre Utrecht (The Netherlands)
  • 72. DFG cluster of excellence 'Physics of Life', TU Dresden
  • 73. Houston Methodist Research Institute
  • 74. Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Fresnel, I2M, IBDM, Turing Centre for Living systems
  • 75. TU-Dresden / EPFL
  • 76. ETH Zurich / University of Zurich
  • 77. Tobeva Software
  • 78. European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
  • 79. Baylor College of Medicine
  • 80. Chinese Academy of Sciences - SIAT, Shenzhen, China
  • 81. Data Science Lab, University of Bern, Switzerland
  • 82. Katana Labs
  • 83. Galgotias University
  • 84. Institute of Cell Biology, University of Bern, Switzerland
  • 85. Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology
  • 86. University of Bonn
  • 87. Institute of Neuropathology, University Hospital of Zürich
  • 88. Delta Tribe SRL
  • 89. Synopsys, Inc.
  • 90. European Spallation Source
  • 91. Netherlands Forensic Institute
  • 92. QStarsIT
  • 93. Aix Marseille University, IBDM, Turing Centre for Living systems
  • 94. University Hospital Heidelberg

Description

napari 0.9.0

⚠️ Note: these release notes are still in draft while 0.9.0a1 is in prerelease testing. ⚠️

Mon, Aug 17, 2026

We're happy to announce the release of napari 0.9.0! napari is a fast, interactive, multi-dimensional image viewer for Python. It's designed for browsing, annotating, and analyzing large multi-dimensional images. It's built on top of Qt (for the GUI), vispy (for performant GPU-based rendering), and the scientific Python stack (numpy, scipy).

For more information, examples, and documentation, please visit our website, https://napari.org.

napari follows EffVer (Intended Effort Versioning); this is a Macro release containing awesome new features, but may require dedication of some significant time when upgrading projects to use this version.

Highlights

Fuzzy find in command palette

Implement fuzzy find for the command palette (#8661)

Adjust grid rendering with hidden layers

If using grid layout without using stride, there are no blanks fields for hidden layers thanks to #9244

Inherit axis labels from layers

Thanks to #9282 the axis labels in interface, next to slide and Dims.axis_labels are calculated based on axis labels of layers

Status bar coordinates as floats

Thanks to #9287 we no longer render coordinates on scale bar as integers, but as floats. It is important for all who use fractional Layer.scale

Public API for auto contrast limit

In #9271 the public API for auto contrast limits is added

  • Canvas model (#8633)

  • Implement Surface slicing with async request/response (#8783)

  • Remove translations code (#8935)

  • Add builtin Wavefront OBJ to surfaces reader (#9228)

  • Dynamically construct layer controls based on selection (#9318)

New Features

  • Implement fuzzy find for the command palette (#8661)
  • Implement Surface slicing with async request/response (#8783)
  • Small refactor of point slicing + rescale projection mode to replace out_of_slice_display (#8786)
  • feat: add new label button to the labels controls (#9215)
  • Add builtin Wavefront OBJ to surfaces reader (#9228)
  • Dynamically construct layer controls based on selection (#9318)

Improvements

  • MAINT Always raise error when widget_name given in get_widget_contribution (#6544)
  • move features table widget command to the Metadata menu (#9231)
  • fix: change the order of edge/face color and border (#9232)
  • Move the layer lock to group with link/unlink, rather than with visib… (#9235)
  • fix: adjust the layout based on the hidden layers in grid (#9244)
  • Improve slider handle conspicuity by using theme's current color for active dim (#9255)
  • publicly expose auto contrast limits (#9271)
  • update dims axis labels from layers axis labels (#9282)
  • Status bar coordinates as floats (#9287)
  • UX: Indicate web links in Help menu with ↗ (unicode character) (#9291)
  • New layer inherits axis labels when derived from another layer (#9293)
  • Adding histogram to surfaces (#9306)
  • Dynamically construct layer controls based on selection (#9318)
  • UX/UI: Bump the splitter (separator) size by 1px (#9344)

Performance

  • [perf] Defer PIL import in labels.py polygon mask (#9205)

Bug Fixes

  • Fix multiscale level selection for anisotropic data (#9201)
  • fix async colormap (#9209)
  • Fix cross layer in multiple viewer example to use line vectors. (#9213)
  • Do not update current_properties on Shapes selection changed (#9221)
  • fix: action binding the new-label tooltips with shortcuts (#9230)
  • fix: add minimum value to grid mode strides to allow negative strides (#9236)
  • fix(qt): dimension sliders need a minimum width (#9254)
  • Fix sync slicing when toggling to 3D with auto contrast (#9263)
  • Fix enum breaks from translations removal (#9274)
  • Fix auto_contrast button state initialization (#9289)
  • Vectors: make edge_color_mode = 'direct' actually leave the feature mapping (#9333)
  • Use magnitude of Layer.scale for points/shape handles (#9339)
  • Change Dims slider connection from textChanged to textEdited to stop wrong updates (#9355)

Documentation

  • [pre-commit.ci] pre-commit autoupdate (docs#1069)
  • Update homepage video for 0.8.0/.1 changes (docs#1070)
  • Enhance contributing documentation with GitHub edit info (docs#1075)
  • Adding uv to getting started - installation (docs#1076)
  • make napari logo usage page (docs#1077)
  • Delete useless line (docs#1078)
  • Update auto-fill-labels loop video to extend end frame (docs#1082)
  • Bring several NAPs up to date (docs#1091)
  • [pre-commit.ci] pre-commit autoupdate (docs#1095)
  • Update dev instructions to use prek (docs#1096)
  • Add initial release notes for 0.9.0 (docs#1097)
  • Update recommended Python version in README from 3.11 to 3.13 (#9223)
  • Load data from zarr in map example if contextily fails (#9307)

Other Pull Requests

  • Update label name in condition of label trigger build (docs#1067)
  • Update version switcher to point to 0.8.0 as stable (docs#1071)
  • Remove contributing text about adding translations (docs#1081)
  • ci(dependabot): bump the github-actions group with 4 updates (docs#1094)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_mode_buttons.py (#9110)
  • Use shared version of label clean workflow (#9116)
  • Remove qt_dict_table.py as its unused (#9119)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_face_color.py (#9123)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in _base_item_model.py (#9126)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in _base_item_view.py (#9127)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_axis_model.py (#9167)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_list_model.py (#9169)
  • typing: remove experimental.qt_poll.py from mypy ignore (#9171)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_border_color.py (#9179)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_edge_color.py (#9183)
  • fix(typing): resolve mypy errors for qt_widget_controls_base (#9185)
  • Update coverage, dask, hypothesis, imageio, matplotlib, platformdirs, tifffile, tqdm, virtualenv, xarray (#9194)
  • [pre-commit.ci] pre-commit autoupdate (#9197)
  • Add example to allowed_labels in check_labels job of label_and_milestone_checker.yml workflow (#9214)
  • TST: parameterizing with iterables is deprecated in pytest (#9217)
  • Add stereo 3D viewer widget example (#9219)
  • Make tensorstore optional dependency of test_labels again (#9220)
  • Remove unnecessary FutureWarning ignore for test_layers_save_svg (#9225)
  • Disable part of test matrix to increase runner availability during sprints/hackathon (#9226)
  • Add (Euro)SciPy Sprint Authors to Citation (#9234)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in qt_brush_size_slider.py (#9238)
  • fix(typing): add typing and fix mypy error in _evented_dict.py (#9240)
  • Gallery example of using a background map (#9245)
  • Adding 4D sample data as a heat diffusion (#9246)
  • Disable interaction with vispy.gloo in test_vispy_labels_polygon_overlay (#9264)
  • ci(dependabot): bump the actions group across 1 directory with 11 updates (#9265)
  • Remove missing translations GH action (#9266)
  • Asynchronous loading text fix (#9267)
  • Pin octokit to tag, not use main branch (#9268)
  • Fix typing problem by provide strict version of _BaseEventedItemModel.getItem (#9272)
  • Fix test failures when running napari in tiling window managers by forcing the screenshot size. (#9284)
  • Update certifi, hypothesis, pandas, platformdirs, tqdm, virtualenv (#9295)
  • deprecate setting dims axis labels in examples (#9297)
  • [pre-commit.ci] pre-commit autoupdate (#9303)
  • Update latlon with map example to follow PEP8 (#9312)
  • Example: combine points and vectors to build a 3D structured object (#9340)
  • Revert "Disable part of test matrix to increase runner availability during sprints/hackathon (#9226)" (#9348)

24 authors added to this release (alphabetical)

(+) denotes first-time contributors 🥳

16 reviewers added to this release (alphabetical)

(+) denotes first-time contributors 🥳

Notes

If you use this software, please cite it using these metadata.

Files

napari/napari-v0.9.0a1.zip

Files (4.0 MB)

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Additional details

Related works

Is supplement to
Software: https://github.com/napari/napari/tree/v0.9.0a1 (URL)

Software

Repository URL
https://github.com/napari/napari