Psychtoolbox interfaces between Matlab or Octave and the computer hardware. The
PTB core routines provide high performance 2D and 3D graphics with the highest
color and luminance precision, timing precision and control. This both on standard
displays, as well as with special visual stimulators, and with High Dynamic Range
displays, and with a wide variety of Virtual/Augmented Reality devices. They expose
raw OpenGL commands, support video playback and capture, as well as low-latency
precisely timed audio playback and capture. They facilitate the collection of observer
responses with high timing precision via various input modalities like keyboard, mouse,
game controllers, multi-touch touch screens, response boxes, gaze trackers, and digital /
analog i/o equipment. Ancillary helper routines support common needs like color space
transformations, calibration, and psychometric procedures like, e.g., the QUEST threshold
seeking algorithm and others.
Various 3rd party frameworks and higher level toolboxes are built on top of Psychtoolbox
to make implementation of research data collection especially easy in specific sub-domains
of neuroscience. For beginners or certain domains there also exist user friendly 3rd party
graphical user interfaces, e.g., PsyBuilder.
This is a reminder that the first large batch of free time limited trials for free use
of Psychtoolbox 3.0.20 and later for Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows will end very
soon for all those machines on which version 3.0.20 was first used before start of
April 2025.
Free trials for those machines will end on coming Monday the 14th of April 2025,
and further use of the software will require a paid software subscription license key,
which you can buy from our store, accessible from www.psychtoolbox.net.
Free trials started for initial installations since April will always end 14 days
after initial use of Psychtoolbox version 3.0.20 or later on a given machine.
We strongly recommend upgrading any 3.0.20 Psychtoolbox to at least version 3.0.21.0,
but in general to the very latest published version.
Buy now and receive a license at a low early-bird rate!
For questions and discussions, follow this link to the discussion thread on our user forum.
For answers to frequently asked questions, follow this link to the slowly building FAQ on our Wiki.
Psychtoolbox 3.0.21.0 “Fruity Aspirational Cashcow” was released at 31st March 2025.
You can download it as a zip file from the following link:
https://github.com/Psychtoolbox-3/Psychtoolbox-3/releases/download/3.0.21.0/3.0.21.0.zip
This marks the end of life and any and all support for Psychtoolbox 3.0.20,
what a short but eventful life it had! This release is strongly recommended
to upgrade to if you are a user of Psychtoolbox 3.0.20 on macOS or Windows,
as it allows most reliable and smooth use under the new paid software license
subscription model that launches today, the 31st of March 2025.
The complete development history can be found in our GitHub repository.
The release tag is “3.0.21.0”, with the full tree and commit logs under the URL:
https://github.com/Psychtoolbox-3/Psychtoolbox-3/tree/3.0.21.0
This Psychtoolbox release was sponsored by Mathworks under the year 2024/2025
contract for significant enhancements, sponsoring the OpenXR hand tracking
support as major new feature.
Highlights:
-
Only improvements for license management for a hopefully smooth imminent start
of the new software subscription licensing model on Apple macOS and MS-Windows.
-
We strongly recommend upgrading from Psychtoolbox 3.0.20 to 3.0.21 at your
earliest convenience if you are a macOS or MS-Windows user, which will require
a paid subscription license for versions 3.0.20 and later very soon! Previous
users of Psychtoolbox 3.0.20 will have until 14th April 2025 to buy a license,
as their free trial will run out during that day. New users will have a 14 day
free trial on a given machine until they have to buy and activate a license.
-
This release is probably one of the very last ones, possibly the last one, to
support almost end-of-life Ubuntu 20.04-LTS or other Linux distributions older
than Ubuntu 22.04.5-LTS and equivalent, e.g., Debian GNU/Linux 12.0 (Bookworm).
All:
-
Improvements to license management via PsychLicenseManagement(); for imminent
launch of the new software licensing business model on MS-Windows and macOS:
- Allow a configurable maximum offline time (grace period) of more than 30 days.
- Improved status messages.
- Built in “News” push message support.
- Support for offline “air-gapped” activation of licenses for select customers.
-
Various other smaller refinements, bug fixes and documentation updates.
Linux:
- Psychtoolbox was built and tested against Matlab R2024a and Octave 5.2 and later.
Windows:
- Psychtoolbox was built and tested against Matlab R2024a and Octave 7.3.
macOS:
- Psychtoolbox was built and tested against native Matlab R2024a and against native
Octave 9.4 from HomeBrew, on macOS 13.7.4 Ventura for Intel Macs, and on macOS 14.5
Sonoma for Apple Silicon Macs.
Enjoy!
Dear colleague,
PsychToolbox (PTB) was first released 30 years ago this year and remains one of the most widely used software packages for running behavioural experiments. It offers unrivalled cross-platform visual and audio fidelity and components of PTB underlie functionality in critical parts of other toolboxes, such as PsychoPy.
PTB has allowed many of us to establish our careers in science, it is used in countless labs around the world, in industry, our teaching, and student supervision and training. It is core in too many scientific publications to count and has been cited over 40000 times.
New for 2025 is native support for Apple Silicon and importantly a new funding model. This will involve a licence to use PsychToolbox, but importantly PsychToolbox will remain open source.
If you want to see PsychToolbox continue into the future, please support us by buying a software licence for your lab at www.psychtoolbox.net. Buy now and receive a license at a low early-bird rate.
Please read on for more details regarding why action is needed now.
Why a new funding model?
Despite repeated years of effort, the uptake of the donation model and the paid support services model for funding PTB has not provided anywhere near sufficient income to support the full-time development of PTB. You might not realise this, but maintaining PTB is the lead developer’s full-time job. The current financial situation is unsustainable, which means that PTB is at the point where development and maintenance may cease in a matter of months.
How does the new funding model work?
Going forward, future versions of PTB for Windows and macOS will require a yearly (very reasonably priced) software license. PTB will remain open source, but development will cease if this funding route is unsuccessful. Full details of how licensing works can be found at the following link. Any proceeds will go directly to funding the salary of PTB’s main and full-time developer, Mario Kleiner. For a limited time only, we are offering a discounted early-bird rate for the new software licences, see our commercial website for full details: www.psychtoolbox.net. Please post any questions you may have to the psychtoolbox forum at https://psychtoolbox.discourse.group/.
What the new funding is not
The new funding model is not an attempt to paywall PTB. The project remains open source. PTB will also remain free on Linux for the time being, ensuring that labs with limited funding can use PTB on the free Linux operating system. The money raised through licenses will directly fund the continued development and existence of PTB. See the following link for further details.
As we enter the 30th year for PTB, if you want to see PTB exist into the future, please act now and buy a software licence for your lab at www.psychtoolbox.net. Over the next few months, if this last option for putting PTB on a sustainable financial footing fails, PTB as it is now will be unviable going forward.
Mario Kleiner and the Psychtoolbox Team