OpenLP 3.0 "Steadfast Simeon" Released

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, it's finally here! Yes, OpenLP 3.0 has
been released!

And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men,
knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance;
for you serve the Lord Christ.

Colossians 3:23-24 WEB

One of our original goals with OpenLP was to move to faster releases, and
while that didn't seem to happen for version 3.0, moving foward we are aiming
to roll out releases much faster. With that in mind, we decided that the worst
bugs have been fixed, and most people should be pretty happy with the 3.0
release.

Known Issues

Before we dive into the new features, here are some known issues which may
apply to you:

Warning

Ubuntu 22.04

The main view in the web remote does not update automatically on Ubuntu 22.04
due to Ubuntu shipping an old version of python3-websockets. This can be fixed
by downloading and installing an updated version of the package from the
official Ubuntu
archive.

Warning

Wayland on Linux

OpenLP at present does not behave well under Wayland so the recommendation is
to run under X11. If you can't run in X11 (or prefer to run it in XWayland),
you should start it with QT_QPA_PLATFORM environment variable set to xcb,
although the Main View from the Web Remote will not work.

Warning

Video backgrounds

Video / streaming backgrounds and background audio in songs currently do not
work together. You may experience either the video not working but the audio
works, or the audio doesn't work while the video does.

Warning

macOS

macOS may report OpenLP as damaged. If you encounter this problem, you can try
the following solution:

1. From Applications / Utilities run Terminal

2. In Terminal, type in the following command:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/OpenLP.app
   

3. This should allow you to start OpenLP normally

New Features

One of the biggest changes in version 3.0 is that we completely rewrote the
renderer, meaning that we were able to bring in efficient transitions between
slides for text items (i.e. songs, Bible verses, custom slides). Transitions
are available as part of themes.

Another major change in version 3.0 is the remote. Maintaining separate
remotes for browsers, Android and iOS was painful and slow. In version 3.0 we
rewrote the remote API, and have consolidated our work into the web remote.
The web remote is also no longer bundled with OpenLP, allowing us to roll out
updates to the remote separately from OpenLP itself. The old API's will be
removed in a future release breaking the Android and IOS applications. Please
migrate to the new Web Interface.

In addition to the two above, OpenLP now supports presentations on macOS,
using LibreOffice, Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac and Keynote. Support of
Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer has been removed.

Other New Features

• VLC is now bundled with OpenLP on macOS and Windows, and there is no need to select a media players

• Guide marks to show position within a clip and the ability to repeat the playing video

• Motion (video) backgrounds in themes

• Better screen detection and configuration

• Performance improvements reducing start up times

• The settings page has been updated, so a number of options have moved

• All icons have been migrated from images to scalable monochromatic fonts to allow for the support of larger desktop displays and dark themes

• OpenLP now ships with a dark interface/UI theme. On Windows and macOS, it can be enabled by enabling the dark theme on system. You can always force the dark theme by changing the Interface Theme in Settings

• Media and Presentations now support being grouped by folders

• Slide numbers in footer can be enabled in Settings

• Songs can be searched by number

• Chord support in songs (can be enabled in Song settings). The chords are shown in the "Chords View" section of Web Remote, which supports chord transposition and mobile devices

• More song formats can be imported: - Singing The Faith - LivePresenter - ProPresenter 5 and 6 - EasyWorship 6 - ChordPro (for chords)

• More bible formats can be imported: - SWORD - WordProject

• Support for importing services from PlanningCenter

Updates and Bug Fixes

A lot more has been fixed, updated or improved, far too much to include here.
If you're really curious, you can do a comparison between 2.4.6 and
3.0.0 on GitLab.

Download

Head on over to the downloads section of the
website to download version 3.0 now!

Download

link