Blender: Beyond Mouse & Keyboard (making Blender tablet-friendly)

https://code.blender.org/2025/07/beyond-mouse-keyboard/

The Blender Foundation is planning on making their Blender program multi-touch friendly by changing the interface for certain devices at first. They say that they want to make these UI/UX improvements across all platforms so perhaps we could see an interface that works better on the Librem 11 or even the Librem 5 v2 (Assuming that the Librem 5 is too weak for most people; if Pixar could render Toy Story in the 1990s, why couldn’t the Librem 5 :wink: )?

While standalone tablets are the primary target, the core design principles apply across all platforms. This means that any UI/UX improvements will immediately benefit regular tablet users, even as Blender is being ported to run natively on the targeted devices.
[…]
The audience is “Blender users”. There is no distinction between desktop or tablet users, the same way mouse/keyboard and graphic tablet users are treated equally.

For now, developments are being made in a separate branch and this could mean that these changes could be scrapped if this does not work the way they envision this project.
They do intend on showing a tech demo at SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver.

This a screenshot of one of their mockup demos:

If you are interested in their work, consider participating in the development, providing feedback, or even donating to Blender.

3 Likes

You can use Blender on L5 already with mouse and keyboard and also use touch input:

The UI is not for touch input yet, of course. I streamed it from my desktop PC. So I can even use Cycles rendering on complex scenes.

The only question remains: why should I use it on such a little screen, when I have a 4k monitor to work with? It makes indeed more sense to use for Tablets.

I don’t know if I ever need Blender in touch friendly, but it’s a great thing, especially for those using painting tools (sculping, coloring, …).

Btw: Blender 4.5 got also native Vulkan support and huge speed improvements on many edges and more cool stuff.

3 Likes