OpenShot 4.0 landed on August 31, 2026, and it's the biggest update the free video editor has shipped in years. The headline additions — screen recording, AI-powered masking, and a pro-grade color correction suite — bring it meaningfully closer to tools that cost hundreds of dollars a year.
Screen and Webcam Recording Built In
The feature most people will notice immediately is the new Recording View. OpenShot can now capture your screen, webcam, microphone, and system audio directly into a project, without any third-party recorder. On Linux, screen capture works on Wayland through desktop portals — no workaround required. You can run multiple sources simultaneously and preview the timeline while a recording is in progress.
For screencasters, tutorial makers, or anyone who currently bounces between OBS and a video editor, this is a meaningful quality-of-life change.
AI Masking via EfficientSAM
OpenShot 4.0 includes an Object Mask effect powered by EfficientSAM, a lightweight implementation of Meta's Segment Anything Model. You click on a subject; the model outlines it. The masking tracks through video frames and works locally — no cloud processing, no subscription.
A new Mask: Source menu connects masks to tracked effects, so you can apply blur, glow, or color correction to a specific subject without manually rotoscoping each frame.
Professional Color Grading
Previous versions of OpenShot had basic color filters. Version 4.0 replaces them with a proper color grading suite: color wheels (lift, gamma, gain), parametric curves, LUT support, and professional video scopes including waveform, vectorscope, and histogram. This is the toolkit you'd expect from DaVinci Resolve Lite — in a free, open-source editor that runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS.
New Effects Pack
The release also adds a batch of new visual and audio effects: Film Grain, Shadow and Glow, Denoise, Displacement Map, Beat Sync (which aligns edits to audio beats automatically), and Audio Visualization. The timeline itself is now native Qt, replacing the previous WebKit-based implementation for better performance and reliability.
Why This Matters
OpenShot has historically been the recommended starting point for Linux video editing — it's in every distro's software center and has a gentle learning curve. But it's often been outclassed on features by Kdenlive or Shotcut for anything serious. Version 4.0 narrows that gap substantially, especially with the color tools and AI masking.
The project is MIT-licensed on GitHub, available through the official site, and now also distributed via the Windows Store in MSIX format. If you haven't tried it since version 3.x, 4.0 is a different product.
Sources: OpenShot official blog · 9to5Linux