Version 4.156.0 (Unreleased)

Runtime and platform refinements

Highlights

The upcoming 4.156 release improves managed and HarfBuzz performance while refining native platform support. It reduces allocation during pixel copying and text shaping, packages WebGPU support with the native library, and improves Android rendering synchronization.

Breaking Changes

None in this preview line.

Bug Fixes

Android texture rendering synchronized — Coordinates Android texture rendering with the display refresh cycle for smoother presentation. (#5345)
Front-buffered streams no longer retain data unnecessarily — Releases retained front-buffered stream data correctly to reduce avoidable memory use. (#5327)

Lifecycle & Internals

Managed image and shaping allocations reduced — Optimizes image pixel copies, feature-string decoding, and HarfBuzz UTF-32 encoding to reduce allocation pressure in common managed workloads. (#5052, #5060, #5230)

Platform

WebGPU support packaged with the native library — Includes emdawnwebgpu's WebGPU implementation in libSkiaSharp.a so consumers receive the required native support with the library. — ❤️ @ramezgerges (#5316)
Apple deployment baseline updated — Updates the minimum supported Apple deployment targets for the upcoming release. (#5383)
Linux native artifact loading hardened — Binds bundled HarfBuzz functions locally so Linux native artifacts use the packaged implementation consistently. — ❤️ @VirgilMing (#5352, #5366)

Community Contributors ❤️

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this release!

Contributor	Contributions
@VirgilMing	Bundled HarfBuzz function binding on Linux and Blazor CPU sample-test stabilization (#5352, #5353)
@dalexsoto	Contextual PoliCheck findings cleanup (#5412)
@ramezgerges	WebGPU implementation packaging in the native SkiaSharp library (#5316)