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9.6beta

What’s New in Paratext 9.6 Beta

Paratext 9.6 Beta released May 13, 2026

9.6beta

It is with great joy we announce to you the availability of Paratext 9.6 Beta! On behalf of the development team, we hope and pray that this software is a blessing to you in your work for bringing God’s Word to all people.

Page Contents

What’s New in Paratext 9.6 Beta

Support for USFM 3.1*

USFM (Unified Scripture Format Markup) 3.1 primarily represents an effort to resolve ambiguities and to standardize a single content model which can be equally expressed in backslash-based format markers (USFM-FM), XML (USFM-XML), or JSON (USFM-JSON).

More Robust Sidebars in Study Bible Addition Projects*

In previous Paratext versions, changing a word or phrase where a sidebar was attached would cause it to become disconnected. In 9.6 Study Bible Additions format, a sidebar is now attached to a paragraph. A sidebar does not become disconnected unless its entire paragraph is deleted or the paragraph changes to a different paragraph marker.

*Opt-in only — Both new features must be enabled by administrators for their project.

IMPORTANT: All project members must upgrade to 9.6. Enabling these features changes project data; thus these projects will no longer be backward compatible with 9.5 or previous versions.

Study Bible Additions (SBA) Improvements

  • Adds check to review adjacent study content
  • Adds check to review hidden or replaced study content
  • Adds the ability to minimize the display of hidden or replaced content
  • Provides checking tools for Study Bible Publication projects†
  • Significantly improves performance for long sections of study content

Checking Improvements

  • Adds better support for multigraphs in the Language settings and the Characters inventory
  • Provides more checking options with whitespace around quote marks
  • Improves the Markers check to report errors previously only found with the Schema check
  • Improves the Schema check
  • Adds check for Custom stylesheets

Additional Improvements

We’ve also made these additional improvements:

  • Improves formatting in Project/Consultant Notes
  • Adds ability to disable autocorrect in Project/Consultant Notes and/or project text†
  • Adds option to hide the symbol for the Simple Space character when displaying whitespace and invisible characters†
  • Many bug fixes

† Indicates that the feature will be available in a forthcoming patch.

How to Install Update Patches

After installing Paratext 9.6 Beta, update patches will be available from within Paratext.

  1. Go to the Paratext menu > Help
    1. Expand to Full menus if necessary.
  2. Enable Automatically update Paratext OR
  3. Use Check for updates.

Compatibility with Previous Paratext versions

It is possible to run both Paratext 9.5 and Paratext 9.6 Beta on your computer at the same time.

However, for a project administrator to opt in to the USFM 3.1 and/or Robust Sidebars in SBA features implemented in 9.6 Beta, all team members must update to 9.6. Once this is done, the project cannot be edited in 9.5 or earlier versions of Paratext.

Plugin Compatibility

If you use any manually installed plugins with Paratext 9.5, Paratext 9.6 Beta won’t see them by default.

To use these plugins in 9.6 Beta:

  1. Copy the plugins folder from C:\Program Files\Paratext 9
  2. Paste the plugins folder to C:\Program Files\Paratext 9 beta

If your plugin does not work after those steps, please report a problem to the Paratext developers team and to the plugin developers.

Thank you for being supportive!

We hope that you can take the time to try out this beta offering.

Paratext 9.6 Beta

Please let us know how it goes for you. From within Paratext, you can go to Paratext menu > Help > Give Feedback, fill out the form, and click “Send” to let us know how we are doing. Your feedback is invaluable in identifying and fixing bugs. Positive feedback is also very valuable for team morale and for partnership development. So, please share your thoughts.

We are grateful to the many translation teams who work hard to make the Word of God available to all people throughout the world. May this software greatly bless your work!

Yours in Christ,

The Paratext Development Team