Shotcut version 26.4 was released on April 30, 2026, and it brings a meaningful set of improvements to one of the best free video editors available on Linux. Whether you edit YouTube videos, short films, or simple home clips, this update has something for you. The download is live now at shotcut.org.
If you have never heard of Shotcut before, here is a quick introduction.
Shotcut is a completely free and open-source video editor that runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It handles a wide range of video and audio formats right out of the box without any extra plugins.
Many Linux users choose it as their first video editor because it does not cost anything and does not require a powerful computer to get started. Version 26.4 builds on that solid foundation with new features that make the editing experience faster and easier.
The biggest change in this release is GPU acceleration for the Speech to Text feature.
Speech to Text is a tool inside Shotcut that listens to the audio in your video and automatically types out what was said as subtitles or captions. Before this update, that process ran entirely on your computer’s main processor, which could be slow on longer videos. Version 26.4 adds a new checkbox in the Speech to Text dialog simply labeled “Use GPU.”
When turned on, the task shifts to your graphics card instead, which is much faster at this kind of work. For Linux and Windows users with a compatible graphics card, generating captions for a ten-minute video can take a fraction of the time it previously did.
The timeline is where most of the editing work happens in Shotcut, and version 26.4 improves it in several practical ways.
You can now drag videos directly from the Recent panel into the timeline without going through extra steps. Zooming in and out of the timeline feels smoother and more predictable.
When you resize a transition, which is the visual blend between two clips, it now stretches evenly from both sides at once instead of only from one end. The keyboard shortcuts for switching between tracks have also changed. The Up and Down arrow keys now move between tracks, which is faster than reaching for the mouse.
A lot of beginner video creators want to add captions to their videos for accessibility or for social media, where viewers often watch without sound. Shotcut 26.4 improves that experience in two ways.
The Burn In Subtitle filter, which permanently bakes text onto the video, now includes Typewriter effect options. This means your captions can appear one character at a time, like someone typing on screen, which is a popular style on social media platforms. The player window also gains new frame guides for common aspect ratios, including 1:1, 16:9, 4:3, and 9:16, so you can see exactly how your video will look on different platforms before you export.
Exporting is how you save your finished video, and version 26.4 makes a few useful changes there too.
You can now add cover art directly inside the export settings, which is the thumbnail image that appears when someone shares your video file in a file manager or media player.
Two new export presets for 10-bit VP9 video in both MP4 and WebM formats have been added. When you are editing in 10-bit mode, which gives you richer colors and smoother gradients, the export defaults to 10-bit HEVC automatically. These options matter most for creators who want the best possible image quality in their final output.
Audio transitions between clips now use a technique called constant-power crossfade. In plain terms, this means the audio volume stays consistent as one clip fades into the next, rather than dipping slightly in the middle. It is a small change but one that makes professionally edited audio feel more natural without any extra work on your part.
Timeline audio recordings, when you record narration or commentary directly inside Shotcut, now save as FLAC files instead of Opus. FLAC is a lossless audio format, meaning no audio quality is thrown away when the file is saved. This is better for editing because you can adjust the recording afterward without it degrading in quality.
For Linux users specifically, the build has been updated to Qt 6.10.3, which is the underlying framework that draws the Shotcut interface on screen. A bug where button menus did not open reliably on Wayland, the display system used by most modern Linux desktops, has been fixed in this release.
Version 26.4 also addresses a long list of bugs that affected stability and reliability. Audio waveforms that sometimes went blank or fell out of sync after editing, markers that disappeared after undoing a clip move, grouped clips that broke during copy and paste operations, and a crash that could happen in the voice preview dialog have all been corrected. Hourly project backups also work correctly again when saving frequently.
On the technical side, several core components inside Shotcut received updates. FFmpeg, which is the engine Shotcut uses to read and write video files, moves to version 8.1. The whisper.cpp library, which powers the Speech to Text feature, is updated to version 1.8.3. The MLT multimedia framework underneath the editing engine moves to version 7.38.0.
Shotcut 26.4 is available as a free download for Linux, Windows, and macOS from the official website at shotcut.org. Linux users can also install it through Flatpak from Flathub, which is often the easiest method on most distributions. The complete list of changes for this release is available in the official Shotcut 26.4 release notes on GitHub.
