A faster release cycle for Zotero

dstillman · 2026-01-22T19:07:47+00:00

After today's release of Zotero 8, we'll be switching to much more frequent "major" releases, with the goal of getting stable features out to all users more quickly.

See our blog post for more details, and let us know if you have any questions.

tim820 · 2026-01-23T09:20:27+00:00

Is there a process that Zotero can implement for users to determine plugin compatibility with major releases in a more systematic way ? So users can easily know before upgrading if any of their plugins will not work.

A more frequent release cycle will make that a more regular issue faced by users.

Ideally a user would be able to check plugin compatibility within Zotero before agreeing to a Zotero update. At its simplest could Zotero display in the plugin listing what each plugin specifies as its strict_max_version (in manifest.json).

As it is, I just tried to check all of my 16 plugins by going to their github pages. Version compatibility is not supplied in any consistent way there, and sometimes not at all. After much searching, I was still uncertain of some of my plugins' version 8 compatibility.

So I went to my Zotero profile directory, and then to the extensions folder there. I opened a 7-Zip console window, which showed me a list of all the XPI files (ie zip files). I opened each XPI in turn, showing all the files it contained, selected each XPI's manifest.json, then opened it in the external text editor. Then I could check the plugin's specified value for strict_max_version.
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/profile_directory

FWIW, of my plugins, the following are not currently v8-compatible:
Zoplicate https://github.com/ChenglongMa/zoplicate/issues/176
zotero-pdf-background
DOI Manager https://github.com/bwiernik/zotero-shortdoi/issues/56
Zutilo https://github.com/wshanks/Zutilo/issues/285
Also, zotero-attachment-scanner does not show an explicit '8' but simply shows 'strict_max_version: *'. EDIT: Seems like it mostly works: https://github.com/SciImage/zotero-attachment-scanner/issues/20#issuecomment-3789358415

So I will probably be holding off on version 8 for a while.

The Chinese plugin store/repository (ironically often the best source for plugin information) does theoretically allow you to filter its list for particular version compatibility. But it currently only shows 4 from all of its plugins as version 8 compatible (I know there are more).
https://zotero-chinese.com/plugins/#zotero=zotero8

Could version compatibility also be listed here in future (as well as ideally being a more up-to-date listing of still-supported plugins) ?:
https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins
(as is, only one plugin mentions a version, and that is v6 !)

dstillman · 2026-01-23T12:55:58+00:00

All OS-compatible version updates will be automatic going forward, and we won't be supporting older versions. Part of the point of rapid release is to try to ensure that everyone is on a recent version, not an old version that we can't fix problems for and that will break as soon as we make data-model changes (new fields and other long-awaited features), so providing more reasons for people not to upgrade is not the goal here.

We know that strict_max_version is tricky with rapid release, and we'll have guidance for plugin developers soon on the dev list. But Zotero 8 has been in beta for a year, so if plugins haven't been marked as compatible, it's probably not a plugin people should be relying on.