Qt essentials define the foundation of Qt on all platforms. They are available on all supported development platforms and on the tested target platforms. They will remain source and binary compatible during Qt 5.
Essential modules are general and useful for a majority of Qt applications. A module that is used for a special purpose is considered an add-on module even if it is available on all supported platforms.
The following table lists the Qt essentials:
| Module | Description |
|---|---|
| Qt Core | Core non-graphical classes used by other modules. |
| Qt GUI | Base classes for graphical user interface (GUI) components. Includes OpenGL. |
| Qt Multimedia | Classes for audio, video, radio and camera functionality. |
| Qt Multimedia Widgets | Widget-based classes for implementing multimedia functionality. |
| Qt Network | Classes to make network programming easier and more portable. |
| Qt QML | Classes for QML and JavaScript languages. |
| Qt Quick | A declarative framework for building highly dynamic applications with custom user interfaces. |
| Qt Quick Controls 2 | Provides lightweight QML types for creating performant user interfaces for desktop, embedded, and mobile devices. These types employ a simple styling architecture and are very efficient. |
| Qt Quick Dialogs | Types for creating and interacting with system dialogs from a Qt Quick application. |
| Qt Quick Layouts | Layouts are items that are used to arrange Qt Quick 2 based items in the user interface. |
| Qt Quick Test | A unit test framework for QML applications, where the test cases are written as JavaScript functions. |
| Qt SQL | Classes for database integration using SQL. |
| Qt Test | Classes for unit testing Qt applications and libraries. |
| Qt Widgets | Classes to extend Qt GUI with C++ widgets. |
If you use qmake to build your projects, the Qt Core and Qt GUI modules are included by default. To link only against
Qt Core, add the following line to your .pro file:
QT -= gui
On Windows, if you do not use qmake or other build tools such as CMake, you also need to link against the qtmain library.
Qt Add-On modules bring additional value for specific purposes. These modules may only be available on some development platform. Many add-on modules are either feature-complete and exist for backwards compatibility, or are only applicable to certain platforms. Each add-on module specifies its compatibility promise separately.
The Qt installers include the option of downloading the add-ons. For more information, visit the Getting Started with Qt page.
The following table lists the Qt add-ons:
| Module | Development Platforms | Target Platforms | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active Qt | Windows | Classes for applications which use ActiveX and COM | |
| Qt 3D | All | Functionality for near-realtime simulation systems with support for 2D and 3D rendering. | |
| Enginio (Deprecated) | All | All | A Backend-as-a-Service solution to ease the backend development for connected and data-driven applications. |
| Qt Android Extras | All | Android | Provides platform-specific APIs for Android. |
| Qt Bluetooth | All | Android, iOS, Linux and macOS | Provides access to Bluetooth hardware. |
| Qt Canvas 3D | All | Enables OpenGL-like 3D drawing calls from Qt Quick applications using JavaScript. | |
| Qt Concurrent | Classes for writing multi-threaded programs without using low-level threading primitives. | ||
| Qt D-Bus | All | Classes for inter-process communication over the D-Bus protocol. | |
| Qt Gamepad | All | Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS (including the tvOS remote), Linux, Windows | Enables Qt applications to support the use of gamepad hardware. |
| Qt Graphical Effects | All | Graphical effects for use with Qt Quick 2. | |
| Qt Help | All | All | Classes for integrating documentation into applications, similar to Qt Assistant. |
| Qt Image Formats | All | Plugins for additional image formats: TIFF, MNG, TGA, WBMP. | |
| Qt Location | All | All | Displays map, navigation, and place content in a QML application. |
| Qt Mac Extras | All | macOS | Provides platform-specific APIs for macOS. |
| Qt Network Authorization | All | All | Provides support for OAuth-based authorization to online services. |
| Qt NFC | All | Android and Linux | Provides access to Near-Field communication (NFC) hardware. |
| Qt OpenGL (Deprecated) |
OpenGL support classes. Deprecated in favor of the QOpenGL* classes in the Qt GUI module.
|
||
| Qt Platform Headers | Provides classes that encapsulate platform-specific information, tied to a given runtime configuration of a platform plugin. | ||
| Qt Positioning | All | Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, WinRT. | Provides access to position, satellite and area monitoring classes. |
| Qt Print Support | All | Classes to make printing easier and more portable. | |
| Qt Purchasing | All | Android, iOS, and macOS. | Enables in-app purchase of products in Qt applications. |
| Qt Quick Controls | All | All | Reusable Qt Quick based UI controls to create classic desktop-style user interfaces. |
| Qt Quick Extras | All | Provides a specialized set of controls that can be used to build interfaces in Qt Quick. | |
| Qt Quick Widgets | All | Provides a C++ widget class for displaying a Qt Quick user interface. | |
| Qt Script (Deprecated) | All |
Classes for making Qt applications scriptable. Deprecated in favor of the QJS* classes in the Qt QML module.
|
|
| Qt SCXML | All | All | Provides classes and tools for creating state machines from SCXML files and embedding them in applications. |
| Qt Script Tools (Deprecated) | All | Additional components for applications that use Qt Script. | |
| Qt Sensors | All | Android, Qt for iOS, WinRT and Mer. | Provides access to sensor hardware and motion gesture recognition. |
| Qt Serial Bus | All | Windows, Linux and Boot to Qt targets. | Provides access to serial industrial bus interface. Currently the module supports the CAN bus and Modbus protocols. |
| Qt Serial Port | All | Windows, Linux, and macOS. | Provides access to hardware and virtual serial ports. |
| Qt Speech | All | Provides support for accessibility features such as text-to-speech. | |
| Qt SVG | All | Classes for displaying the contents of SVG files. Supports a subset of the SVG 1.2 Tiny standard. | |
| Qt UI Tools | All | All | Classes for loading QWidget based forms created in Qt Designer dynamically, at runtime. |
| Qt WebChannel | All | All | Provides access to QObject or QML objects from HTML clients for seamless integration of Qt applications with HTML/JavaScript clients. |
| Qt WebEngine | All | Windows, Linux, and macOS. | Classes and functions for embedding web content in applications using the Chromium browser project. |
| Qt WebSockets | All | All | Provides WebSocket communication compliant with RFC 6455. |
| Qt WebView | All | Platforms with a native web engine. | Displays web content in a QML application by using APIs native to the platform, without the need to include a full web browser stack. |
| Qt Windows Extras | All | Windows | Provides platform-specific APIs for Windows. |
| Qt X11 Extras | All | Linux/X11 | Provides platform-specific APIs for X11. |
| Qt XML |
C++ implementations of SAX and DOM.
Note: This module is not required to use QXmlStreamReader and QXmlStreamWriter. They are already part of Qt Core. |
||
| Qt XML Patterns | Support for XPath, XQuery, XSLT and XML schema validation. | ||
| Qt Wayland Compositor | Linux | Linux and Boot to Qt targets. | Provides a framework to develop a Wayland compositor. |
|
Add-ons available under Commercial Licenses, or GNU General Public License v3 |
|||
| Qt Charts | All | UI Components for displaying visually pleasing charts, driven by static or dynamic data models. | |
| Qt Data Visualization | All | All | UI Components for creating stunning 3D data visualizations. |
| Qt Virtual Keyboard | All | Linux and Windows desktop, and Boot to Qt targets. | A framework for implementing different input methods as well as a QML virtual keyboard. Supports localized keyboard layouts and custom visual themes. |
In addition to the modules released as part of Qt 5, the following modules and tooling build on top of the Qt libraries to provide additional value. They have their own release schedule, and are available under the commercial license.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Qt Automotive Suite | A collection of software components and tools to enable development of In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) systems. Built on top of the Qt for Device Creation offering and compliant with the GENIVI automotive platform architecture. |
| Qt for Automation | Libraries and tools for automation related domains, such as KNX, OPC UA, and MQTT. |
| Qt for Device Creation | Tools for fast, easy, and fully-integrated embedded device application development. Included in most other value-add solutions. |
The following modules are still in development but are available as technology previews.
| Module | Description |
|---|---|
| Qt Remote Objects | Provides an easy to use mechanism for sharing a QObject's API (Properties/Signals/Slots) between processes or devices. |
Qt Tools run on all the supported development platforms and facilitate the development and design of applications.
The following table lists the Qt tools:
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Qt Designer | Classes for extending Qt Designer. |
We invite you to explore the rest of Qt. We prepared overviews which help you decide which APIs to use and our examples demonstrate how to use our API.
