The QGIS Project proudly announces the release of QGIS 3.42, a significant step forward in the development of Free and Open Source Geospatial Information Systems. This release builds upon the solid foundations of previous releases while introducing exciting new features and enhancements that will streamline workflows and empower users in their spatial analysis endeavors.

Notable enhancements have been introduced for features that move beyond the traditional map frame, such as various aspects of 3D Map Views, plots and profiles, as well as a new Virtual Point Cloud overview widget for improved navigation across complex datasets. Greater control is provided for cartographic functionality, such as CSS-based label properties and extensions to the Python API, while advanced data types such as Mesh and Point Clouds have also seen their fair share of improvements.

A new set of Metadata Tools has been added to the Processing toolbox (along with various other new additions and enhancements), whilst a new feature will allow users to label Pixels on Raster data. Layout tools have not been forgotten, and the QGIS Python console also has a new interactive help feature with direct integration with project documentation sources for an enhanced developer experience.

For a whirlwind tour of all the new functionalities introduced, you can view the highlight reel video on YouTube.

QGIS is a community effort, and we would like to extend a big thank you to the developers, documenters, testers, and the many folks out there who volunteer their time and effort (or fund people to do so) to make these releases possible. From the QGIS community, we hope you enjoy this release! If you wish to donate time, money, or otherwise contribute towards making QGIS more awesome, please wander along to QGIS.ORG and lend a hand!

QGIS is supported by donors and sustaining members. A current list of donors who have made financial contributions large or small to the project can be seen on our list of donors. If you would like to become an official project sustaining member, please visit our sustaining member page for more details. Sponsoring QGIS helps us to fund our regular developer meetings, maintain project infrastructure, and fund bug-fixing efforts. A complete list of current sponsors is provided below - our very big thank you to all of our sponsors!

QGIS is free software and you are under no obligation to pay anything to use it - in fact, we want to encourage people far and wide to use it regardless of their financial or social status - we believe that empowering people with spatial decision-making tools will result in a better society for all of humanity.

Feature: Add configurable extent buffer to symbols

In previous versions of QGIS, only features located within the canvas extent were considered for rendering under certain conditions.

This would cause issues with certain symbologies, especially when using complex geometry generators, as users would not see features where the rendered symbol might have appeared within the canvas but the source feature does not.

For example, if using a point feature to generate a buffer polygon such as buffer(@geometry, 7), the buffer would not render if the point was not within the canvas extent.

A new configuration option for symbols allows for a buffer of the canvas extent to envelope these additional features within the user-defined constraints and balance performance with complex data visualization requirements.

This feature was funded by the National Land Survey of Finland.

This feature was developed by Juho Ervasti

Feature: Raster labeling

QGIS now allows raster pixels to be labeled with the value taken from a raster band. Labels are registered with the labeling engine, and so will participate in label conflict resolution and overlap avoidance. Options include:

• Selection of band to take values from
• Using QgsNumericFormat to customize the number format for the labels
• Uses text renderer, so supports buffers, shadows, etc
• Label priority
• Scale dependant visibility
• Optional pixel size dependent visibility, i.e. show only when pixels are > 4mm in size
• Z index control, overlap avoidance mode
• Option for showing values resampled over neighboring pixels

This feature was funded by Canton de Neuchâtel

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Custom tab distances for labels

Allows setting a list of custom tab stop distances on labels, instead of just a single distance This allows different thresholds to be used between breaks.

This feature was funded by City of Freiburg im Breisgau

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Support CSS background property in labels/text renderer

QGIS now supports CSS background-color and background-image properties when used with HTML labels.

• Backgrounds are supported for block items (e.g. <div>) or inline items (e.g. <span>)
• For images, the CSS should be formatted as background-image: url(xx). It supports local file paths, http links, or base64 embedded content
• Backgrounds are not supported for curved text
• HTML backgrounds are always rendered above any background shape for the label, and below drop shadows/buffers

This feature was funded by City of Freiburg im Breisgau

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Support CSS margins for block elements in HTML labels

QGIS has added support for CSS margin properties on block elements in the text renderer. Specifically:

• This is available for block-type elements only, e.g. DIV, P, H1-H6.
• Margins are NOT available for spans or other non-block content (due to Qt limitations)
• Margins can be specified in pt units only
• Margins can be specified either via "margin-left: 5pt; margin-right: 10pt" etc, or "margin: 5pt 0pt 10pt 0pt"
• Negative margins are supported for the bottom margin ONLY (due to Qt limitations)

This feature was funded by City of Freiburg im Breisgau

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Support CSS line-height in HTML labels

QGIS has added support for the line-height CSS property in HTML formatted labels.

Supports line-height in either points or percent, e.g. "line-height: 40pt" or "line-height: 40%"

This feature was funded by City of Freiburg im Breisgau

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Mesh Render Extent Settings

The renderer setting for Mesh now includes an option for setting the Min/Max limits of the Color Ramp renderer based on the current canvas extent. This can be locked to a specific canvas instance or changed based on the active canvas using the same rendering behaviors as Raster Layers.

This feature was developed by Jan Caha

Feature: Mesh editing delaunay refinement

Mesh editing now includes a new Delaunay refinement option. When adding a vertex to a mesh face, this feature allows for the automatic refinement of neighboring triangular faces. The algorithm checks if the edges of these adjacent faces meet the Delaunay condition, and if not, it automatically flips the edges to improve the mesh quality.

This feature was developed by Jan Caha

Feature: Dataset group controls for mesh layers

Mesh layers now offer more flexible dataset group management. Users can add dataset groups with the same name (though not from the same URI) to a mesh layer. To avoid confusion, these duplicate names will be automatically appended with a number (e.g., "Original Name_1").

Additionally, users can now remove dataset groups from a mesh layer, however, only added dataset groups (those not associated with the original mesh source file) can be removed, preventing accidental deletion of core data.

This feature was developed by Jan Caha

Feature: Mesh selection actions

Two new actions have been added for selecting vertices on Mesh layers, namely:

• select isolated vertices that are not part of any face
• select all vertices from mesh layer

This allows users more control over the selection criteria of specific vertices.

This feature was developed by Jan Caha

Feature: Elevation assignment modes for added mesh vertices

The "Digitize Mesh Element" tool has an additional menu that allows users to select which method to utilize for the assignment of Z values on newly created vertices. New options include:

• Prefer Mesh, then Z Widget (interpolates z value from mesh if a vertex is inside face of mesh, otherwise uses Z widget value)
• Prefer Mesh, then Terrain (interpolates z value from mesh if a vertex is inside face of mesh, otherwise uses terrain value)
• Project Terrain (always uses project terrain Z value)
• Z Widget (always get Z values from widget)

The "Transform Mesh Vertices" panel also has a new button added that allows users to set the Z value of selected vertices from inferred values based on the project terrain settings.

This feature was developed by Jan Caha

Feature: Debug widget for 3D views

A new debug side panel for 3D Map Views moves all relevant debug settings into a single location.

This feature was developed by Matej Bagar

Feature: Virtual point cloud overviews in 2D

The default behavior of VPC rendering has been changed so that an overview is rendered when present and alternatively extents are rendered when zooming out. Layer configuration via the styling panel provides advanced control over the user-preferred behavior, allowing users to seamlessly switch between rendering just the extents, just the overview, or a combination of the two.

This feature was funded by Klimadatastyrelsen

This feature was developed by Matej Bagar

Feature: Double-clicking a mouse handle for a layout label resizes to fit text

Double-clicking a handle will auto-size the label to fit exactly within the contained text (growing or shrinking as needed). The opposite side of the label will remain fixed in place so that, for example, double-clicking the bottom-right handle causes the bottom-right corner of the label to move.

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Action on double click layout item

The QGIS API has been extended to add an event to Print Layout elements that are double-clicked, allowing for more advanced functionalities to be introduced in the future (e.g. double-click to edit an item).

This feature was developed by Yoann Quenach de Quivillic

Feature: Layout better node item creation

When digitizing shapes with layout tools, the behavior has been modified to align better with the existing user experience in digitizing tools, which allows users the ability to remove incorrectly captured vertices on their shapes.

This feature was developed by Yoann Quenach de Quivillic

Feature: Apply layout page size to all pages

A new "Apply to all Pages" button has been added to the Page Properties panel for multi-page layouts so that users can more efficiently make changes to complex layout properties.

This feature was developed by Yoann Quenach de Quivillic

Feature: New quality parameter for layout JPG exports

A new quality parameter has been added to the JPEG/JPG Image export options within print layouts to provide users more control of their export options.

This feature was developed by Yoann Quenach de Quivillic

Feature: Highlight Trim/Extend plane of intersection

The styling and behavior for the Trim/Extend functionality has been modified to more closely align with the UX of the Advanced Digitizing tools so that geometry limits are more clearly represented to users visually.

This feature was developed by Yoann Quenach de Quivillic

Feature: Enable snapping in Georeferencer

The advanced digitizing panel and snapping options have been added to the georeferencer interface to offer users more control over reference points when aligning datasets.

This feature was developed by Denis Rouzaud

Feature: Data Source Manager STAC enhancements

Building on the STAC Client capabilities introduced in QGIS 3.40 as a part of QEP#300, the QGIS STAC client now supports additional functionalities including:

• STAC Catalog search functionality within the Data Source Manager
• Advanced filtering for returned results
• Display or hide footprints of the search results items in the map canvas
• Highlight the selected item's footprint

This feature was developed by Stefanos Natsis

Feature: Additional sorting options on value relation widget

The value relation widget now includes a few new sorting options, including:

• reverse order
• order by a specific field

This feature was funded by Consorzio della Bonifica Renana

This feature was developed by Alessandro Pasotti

Feature: Processing metadata tools

New native algorithms have been added to the processing toolbox for better handling of layer metadata.

• Copy layer metadata to copy metadata from an input layer to a target layer
• Apply layer metadata to set layer metadata from a QMD file
• Export layer metadata to export layer metadata in a QMD file
• Add history metadata to add a new history entry to existing entries defined for a layer
• Update layer metadata to copy non-empty metadata fields from the input layer to a target layer and keep empty fields from input unchanged in the target
• Set metadata fields to set simple metadata fields (identifier, parent identifier, title, type, encoding, language, CRS, abstract, fees)

This feature was developed by Alexander Bruy

Feature: Expression based hover content in Scatterplots

New options for the Vector layer scatterplot processing algorithm allow users to optionally add text shown on hover using QGIS expressions.

This feature was developed by Florian Neukirchen

Feature: Add option to include 'layer' and 'path' attributes in Merge Vector Layers tool

A new checkbox option has been added to the Merge Vector Layers processing tool. This option allows users to choose whether to include the layer and path attributes from the individual input vector layers in the resulting merged layer. By default, this option is enabled to maintain backward compatibility.

This feature was developed by Nass

Feature: Move Geometry Checker into processing tools

In line with the objectives of QEP#236, which seeks to align and unify all geometry and topology verification/ validation methods, the Geometry Checker has now been integrated into the QGIS Processing Toolbox.

These algorithms have been added to the "Check Geometry" and "Fix Geometry" categories accordingly, and each algorithm maintains a consistent experience having a single input layer and two output layers.

For check processing algorithms, the outputs are:

• a layer of the same type as the input layer with erroneous geometries only
• a point layer with the error locations and information (feature id, part, and vertex number, etc.)

For fix processing algorithms, the outputs are:

• a fixed layer of the same type as the input layer with corrected features according to the the chosen method
• a point layer with the error locations and a report about the fix (fixed or not, and a message about the processed feature)

This feature was funded by QGIS (Grant OpenSource 2023) and Oslandia

This feature was developed by Jacky Volpes

Feature: Add title, axis titles, and logarithmic axes to plots

Plotting algorithms in the "Plots" section of the Processing Tools have been extended with new functionalities.

The Scatterplot, Barplot, and Boxplot algorithms now allow for the specification of plot titles as well as axis titles as optional parameters, If axis titles are empty, the name of the field is used as the axis title by default.

If a single space is entered, the axis title is not shown (restoring the current behavior).

Scatterplots now also support using logarithmic scales across either axis.

This feature was developed by Florian Neukirchen

Feature: Raster zonal min/max algorithm

A new algorithm has been added that extracts point features corresponding to the minimum and maximum pixel values contained within polygon zones.

The output will contain one point feature for the minimum and one for the maximum raster value for every individual zonal feature from a polygon layer.

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Algorithm to extract min/max pixel from raster

A new algorithm has been added that extracts extrema (minimum and maximum) values from a given band of the input raster layer.

The output is a vector layer containing point features for the selected extrema, at the center of the associated pixel.

If multiple pixels in the raster share the minimum or maximum value, then only one of these pixels will be included in the output.

The algorithm uses raster iterator to remain efficient on huge rasters, and does not require reading the entire raster to memory

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: New algorithm to generate elevation profile images

A new processing algorithm has been created which allows users to generate elevation profile images. This can effectively be used within models and will allows users to efficiently output elevation profiles for multiple curves.

This feature was developed by Mathieu Pellerin

Feature: New Mesh: Surface to Polygon Algorithm

A new processing algorithm has been added for Mesh datasets that exports a surface of the mesh to a MultiPolygon output.

This feature was developed by Jan Caha

Feature: Introduce custom tolerance for vector layers

Users can define a custom tolerance by adding a custom tolerance property to the layer elevation properties. When set, this will override the global tolerance parameter defined in the elevation profile widget.

This feature was developed by Jean Felder

Feature: Execute SQL from layer context menu

Users can now execute SQL directly across supported layers from within the projects table of contents.

This feature was developed by Jürgen Fischer

Feature: Expose QgsGeos class to PyQGIS

GEOS-specific functionality which is not exposed through the base QgsGeometryEngine class is now directly accessible via the new QgsGeos class.

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson

Feature: Make Z and M values accessible via QgsGeometry.as_numpy()

In previous versions of QGIS, the QgsGeometry.as_numpy() method would return coordinates with XY values only.

In this release as_numpy has been modified so that the coordinates for geometries with z and/or m values will be returned as xyz, xym, or xyzm accordingly.

This feature was developed by Till Frankenbach

Feature: Python console interactive help

When pressing F1 within the Python Console, QGIS will automatically open the API page matching:

• selected text if any OR
• word at the mouse position (if enabled in settings, see below) OR
• word at the text cursor position

The documentation will be opened within the new documentation section that has been added to the Debugging and Development tools panel so that developers can have easy access to the API documentation for current code objects directly within the application.

Additional QGIS settings have also been added so that developers can more readily modify this behavior to suit their workflow.

This feature was developed by Yoann Quenach de Quivillic

Feature: Bug fixes by Even Rouault (Spatialys)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Even Rouault (Spatialys)

Feature: Bug fixes by Alessandro Pasotti (QCooperative)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Alessandro Pasotti (QCooperative)

Feature: Bug fixes by Julien Cabieces (Oslandia)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Julien Cabieces (Oslandia)

Feature: Bug fixes by Jacky Volpes (Oslandia)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Jacky Volpes (Oslandia)

Feature: Bug fixes by Nyall Dawson (North Road)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Nyall Dawson (North Road)

Feature: Bug fixes by Alexander Bruy (QCooperative)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Alexander Bruy (QCooperative)

Feature: Bug fixes by Mathieu Pellerin (OPENGIS)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Mathieu Pellerin (OPENGIS)

Feature: Bug fixes by Stefanos Natsis (LutraConsulting)

This feature was funded by QGIS.ORG (through donations and sustaining memberships)

This feature was developed by Stefanos Natsis (LutraConsulting)