Hey everyone! We’re excited to share Second Life Viewer 2025.07, headlined by native Apple Silicon support and several key improvements to stability, voice, and UI performance.
New Features
Apple Silicon Support — The viewer now ships as a Universal Binary, including both Intel and Apple Silicon builds. Expect smoother performance and faster rendering on M-series Macs.
Nearby Tab Slider — A new slider makes it easier to manage visibility and sorting within the Nearby panel. (Thanks @secretfoxclaw!)
Zoom to Object from Chat — Quickly focus your camera on an object mentioned in chat.
Quality of Life Improvements
Performance Boosts on macOS:
Added support for Apple Silicon based systems.
Integrated CEF 139 for improved security and performance.
Added preloading of web content during login, reducing wait time when opening web-based floaters (e.g., Search, Marketplace).
Voice & WebRTC Reliability: Improved device detection and recovery when unplugging/replugging microphones.
Fixed several rare WebRTC crash scenarios and added better voice cleanup and logging.
In world Voice indicator now properly reappears after tuning.
Draw Distance Optimization: Viewer now automatically lowers draw distance when system memory is low, preventing sudden frame drops.
Bandwidth Sanity Checks: Prevents invalid input and improves network stability during login/logout.
Improved Logout Handling: Viewer now attempts to send a final logout message even under poor network conditions.
SLURL Validation: Enhanced schema detection for more reliable link handling.
Model Upload Warnings: Clearer notifications when physics libraries are missing.
Bug & Crash Fixes
Fixed multiple crash issues in:
LLReflectionMapManager::update
LLJoint::findJoint
LLHUDEffect::render
LLWearableItemsList::ContextMenu
getDimensionsF32
Restored Marketplace and Search navigation UI after regression.
Fixed Shared Media on HUDs not loading properly.
Resolved device index issues on macOS affecting audio input/output.
Fixed voice cleanup and device update crash on reinitialization.
Fixed build issues related to missing dependencies (nsis) and clang compiler warnings.
Numerous stability updates from recent mac_arm branch reviews.
Developer Highlights
This release also includes several foundational updates aimed at improving build reliability, QA coverage, and cross-platform support:
Continuous Integration Improvements: Added new runners to the QA workflow and integrated clang cleanup to remove unused variables.
CMake Behavior Updates: Adjusted build targets to align with updated macOS deployment rules.
Mac Arm Follow-Up Fixes: Reviewed and refined the mac_arm branch, ensuring parity between Intel and ARM architectures.
Dullahan Browser Engine: Updated to CEF 139 for better compatibility with future Chromium-based features.
General Code Health: Trimmed coroutine queues, improved logout handling, and tuned rendering logic for performance and maintainability.
New Contributors
Welcome and thank you to our new contributors this release!
MacOS X 11 and older will not run on this and future viewers, please use build 7.2.1.
Pathfinding tools are not yet supported on Apple Silicon.
Convex decomposition and mesh upload only work via Rosetta.
To enable: Right-click the Second Life Viewer app → Get Info → Check “Open using Rosetta.”
A fix for native Apple Silicon pathfinding and physics tools is planned for the next release.
The viewer’s disk image will display x86_64. It is in fact a Universal Binary.
Enjoy exploring this new Universal Viewer! We’ll share benchmark numbers for Apple Silicon performance soon — early testing shows notable gains in frame rate and responsiveness.