Arduino IDE 2.1 Launches with Better Library Manager, Easier Cloud Backups, and More
Now available to download on Windows, macOS, and Linux, Arduino IDE 2.1 fixes a range of bugs and boasts new one-click sketch backup too.
The Arduino team has announced the release of Arduino IDE 2.1, the first point release in the second-generation integrated development environment (IDE) targeting Arduino and Arduino-compatible microcontroller boards — and the new release brings with it a better Library Manager and easy cloud backup functionality.
"The development of the Arduino IDE is made possible thanks to a passionate open source community," the Arduino team writes by way of background to the latest release, "and to everyone supporting us with donations, purchases of original Arduino hardware, or Arduino Cloud subscriptions."
Arduino IDE 2.1 brings two headline improvements over the 2.0 version. The first of these is in usability: the Library Manager has received a full redesign, aimed to make its use clearer, with a revamped search system to make it quicker to pull up relevant libraries for your boards and hardware. It's also now possible to load example sketches included with a library from within the Library Manager, as a quicker way to get started with an unfamiliar library.
The second is designed to prevent a loss of data by offering one-click backups of your sketches to the Arduino Cloud. The new "Push Sketch to Cloud" icon in Arduino IDE 2.1 does exactly what it sounds like, with a separate pull function allowing backed-up sketches to be loaded on any computer connected to the same Arduino Cloud account.
Other improvements in the new release include the ability to name sketches with a leading underscore and fixes for bugs including scroll position reversion, duplicated editor tabs, window focus switching, Serial Monitor auto-scroll issues, a crash when uploading sketches to the cloud, and corruption of multi-byte characters when pulling sketches down from the cloud.
The new release is now available to download from the Arduino website for Windows, macOS, and Linux . The source code, meanwhile, can be found on GitHub under the GNU Affero General Public License 3.
