SharpCap Forums

Hi folks,

I just wanted to post an update on what is coming up for SharpCap in 2026...

I have now stopped adding new features to SharpCap 4.1 - I will continue releasing bugfix updates for now and will also add any new SDK updates from camera manufacturers. I'm going to be fairly strict on what classifies as a bug when doing this...

New stuff - new features, improvements to existing features, etc - will happen in a new version of SharpCap that I'm calling SharpCap 4.2 at the moment. I've started putting some small new features in this version already as well as making some technical changes to update the software.

Some of you might be wondering why I've made this change now when I have been happily adding new features to SharpCap 4.1 updates over the last year or two... Well, as I have mentioned previously, I intend to stop producing 32-bit versions of SharpCap shortly, and I felt that doing that at a more major version change was the most sensible way to do it.

At the same point, the switch from 4.1 to 4.2, I'm also updating the Microsoft technologies that SharpCap I use to create SharpCap. This brings in new bug fixes in the underlying technologies that I can't fix myself and usually performance improvements too. It also means that I can use the most up-to-date development tools improves my productivity and ease of implementing new features and debugging issues. On the flip side, the new Microsoft updates require Windows 10 or above, meaning that SharpCap 4.2 will no longer support Windows 7 or 8/8.1.

Now, I know that some people are very unwilling to update to newer versions of Windows, and even I will admit that Windows XP, 7 and 10 were 'classic' versions with Vista, 8 and 11 all being more annoying than their predecessors... So, before making my decision on dropping support for Windows 7 and 8, I checked what versions of Windows recent versions of SharpCap were being used on. I was actually quite surprised...

Windows 11 : 74.7%
Windows 10 : 24.7%
Windows 8/8.1 : 0.2%
Windows 7 : 0.4%

I was expecting a much higher showing from Windows 10 compared to 11 and and also a bigger showing from Windows 7. Anyway, as you can see, only about 0.6% of SharpCap users who have updated to a relatively recent version will be affected by the loss of Windows 7/8 support. The figures are similar for the removal of 64-bit support - only about 0.2% of users are still using a 32-bit version of Windows and therefore would be unable to upgrade to SharpCap 4.2

So, that's the plan for SharpCap 4.2 - once I have some more features added in a month or two I will start to make pre-release versions available for testing.

cheers,

Robin

Hi

Very interesting, thank you.

I won't deny that I'm very curious to see a preliminary list of the new features, even if it's not definitive.

Congratulations on the immense work you've done, enabling what? hundreds? thousands? of people to practice astrophotography at all levels.
Thank you.

Carlo

I second Carlo’s post. Thank you for all your hard work Robin. Looking forward to the new sc. Just keeps getting better better!

George

Thanks for the update and also for all the hard work you put into the software, if you could put "Prevent Clouds / Switch off moon" as the highest priority new feature it would be appreciated

Cheers
Nick

Robin

My view is that dropping support for 2 versions of Windows plus removal of the 32-bit variant warrants a v5 label, otherwise some versions of 4.x support the features and some don't.

My capture laptop is an i3 with 16Gb running Windows 10 (with a 1Tb drive in the drawer, ready for a swap). It does everything I need. The laptop reports that it is not suitable for Windows 11. It looks like the move to Windows 11 is happening fairly quickly, faster than previous versions. For me the jury is out on the next version.

Dave

I would tend to agree with Dave on the version number comment.

Hi,

thanks for the feedback on the version number - I am undecided on that, so it is easiest (least hassle) to leave it at 4.2 for now, as a last minute change to 5.0 from 4.2 will not cause any problems, but a last minute change in the other direction could be a bit of a mess...

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,
Do you plan to update the manual anytime soon?

Thanks

Hi,

To be honest, the manual is usually in second place to the software when it comes to updates. If there are bugs to fix or new features to add that will help people out then I tend to prioritize those... Maybe once 4.2 is done there will be a time when the new features are added and I can have a look at the documentation again. I wonder if I can get AI to write it for me...

cheers,

Robin

I just wanted to affirm that, as a user, I vastly prefer that development time be spent on enhancements and bug fixes. I know that documentation is important, but most things can be figured out by poking around the interface and thinking about what is logical, and failing that, simply asking questions here on the forums.

Having said that, there may indeed be AI tools these days that you could simply feed the code base into and have it generate documentation. That would have to be edited, of course, but it could reduce the workload by half or more.