Snapmaker has moved its OrcaSlicer fork from 2.4.0 Alpha to 2.4.0 Beta in a week. The Beta release notes, published September 17, 2026, say plainly that the feature set is unchanged from the Alpha of September 10. What the Beta adds is repair work: six fixes collected during Alpha testing, two of them for crashes. The substance of the 2.4.0 cycle sits in the Alpha, and anyone deciding whether to install needs both sets of notes.

A clarification first. This is Snapmaker Orca, the company's own fork of OrcaSlicer. It is a separate project from mainline OrcaSlicer, so version numbers between the two should not be compared.

What the Beta actually fixes

The Beta notes list six items. Two are crashes. One is an occasional crash on send-print that occurred when the device filament information cache had been double-encoded (#849 / #850). The other is a crash on opening the preset comparison dialog (#848).

The remaining four are mostly macOS problems:

  • Models opened from Snapmaker Space links were being dropped on macOS. The notes credit community user KuzuriAo with both reporting and fixing this (issue #851, PR #852).
  • Embedded web pages loaded abnormally on macOS. The fix also adds a two-minute watchdog status report (#857).
  • The macOS Home and Device page could show a blank screen, traced to concurrent WKWebView loading and local-network policy restrictions (#853 / #865).
  • Calibration could fail because of a config type mismatch affecting enable_overhang_speed, initial_layer_speed and slow_down_layer_time (#861).

The Beta also refreshes the app icon and the web wizard logo.

The Alpha is where the changes are

Because the Beta is a bug-fix pass, the meat of the release is in the Alpha notes.

On the interface side, selecting an object now highlights it: the bounding box is displayed and the model's edges are highlighted in white, or in yellow in assembly mode. A level-of-detail (LOD) system targets complex scenes. In the Color Mixing Match tool, Auto Match mode gains color selection, so you can pick filament colors manually.

On the printing side, the Alpha adds High-Flow Hot End parameter support for select filaments and profiles. Snapmaker also lists six new filaments compatible with the U1, several in multiple nozzle sizes:

  • Snapmaker TPU in 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 mm
  • PEBA 90A in 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 mm
  • PLA Glow in 0.6 and 0.8 mm
  • PLA Rainbow in 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 mm
  • Support for PLA in 0.2 mm
  • PETG-CF in 0.6 and 0.8 mm

Color libraries also grew, including PLA Silk (+14), PLA Snapspeed (+10), PLA Glow (+5), PEBA 90A (+5) and PLA Full Spectrum (+4). Snapmaker says large-model slicing and G-code upload are more stable, and small-area flow compensation's "flow compensation model" parameter now has a default value.

Merged presets

The change most likely to bite existing users is the preset cleanup. Presets at the same layer height but different quality levels, such as Fine and High Quality, have been merged into single Standard presets on the U1. The notes include a mapping table from old to new. If you keep custom profiles derived from a removed preset, check their parameters against that table after upgrading before trusting a slice.

Under the hood

The Alpha also carries platform housekeeping. OpenSSL moves from 1.1.1w to 3.5.7, an LTS release. The macOS CI moves from macos-14 to macos-15 with the Xcode 16 toolchain, and the embedded Flutter framework jumps from 3.24 to 3.41. Snapmaker flags these as major dependency upgrades touching every networked feature, and asks for testing from macOS, weak-network and proxy users. Alpha fixes on the connectivity side include Windows connection state after screen-off, repeated login prompts after third-party sign-in, and eased white screens on weak networks.

Hot ends and the high-flow parameters

High-flow support only helps if your hardware matches the profile. Per Snapmaker's U1 hot end guide (an undated page, so treat it as context rather than as tied to this release), the U1 ships with 0.4 mm stainless-steel hot ends. Hardened-steel hot ends in 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 mm can be bought from Snapmaker's store, all with a listed 300 C maximum printing temperature.

The guide gives optimal layer heights by nozzle: 0.05 to 0.12 mm for the 0.2 mm nozzle, 0.1 to 0.3 for 0.4 mm, 0.15 to 0.45 for 0.6 mm and 0.2 to 0.6 for 0.8 mm. After a swap you set the nozzle diameter on the touchscreen under Settings, Maintenance, Toolhead Info, and re-run calibration. The guide states that mixing different nozzle diameters in a single print job is currently not supported, and that the 0.2 mm hardened nozzle is not recommended with TPU 95A HF. Hot end setup requires firmware V1.3.0 or higher.

Known issues and cautions

Snapmaker is not calling this finished. The Beta notes list three open problems, with progress tracked on board #840:

  • The "Upload and Print" printer dropdown shows no printers on first open, and the Add Printer dialog cannot be closed (#854).
  • The default U1 filament-change G-code poses a head-crash risk in sequential, one-at-a-time printing (#859).
  • The fan speeds Orca sends do not match what the U1 actually runs (#864).

The collision item deserves the most attention. If you print multiple objects sequentially on the U1, watch the first filament change rather than walking away.

Two upgrade points apply. Snapmaker recommends updating device firmware to 2.0.0 or higher before installing the Beta (#862). And because the Alpha notes warn that the new version may migrate configuration one way, so that rolling back may not fully restore it, back up your configuration first: %AppData%\Snapmaker_Orca\ on Windows or ~/Library/Application Support/Snapmaker_Orca/ on macOS.

What It Means for Makers

For U1 owners, this is a reasonable testing build but not a production one. The crash fixes matter, and the new filament profiles and high-flow parameters are the reasons to be curious. The costs are the possible one-way migration, the recommended firmware 2.0.0 upgrade, three open issues and merged presets.

A sensible approach is to copy the config directory, install the Beta alongside a working setup, and slice a familiar model with a familiar profile to check that the merged presets did not shift anything. Run sequential prints only under supervision until the filament-change G-code issue is resolved.

One caveat on coverage: this article rests on Snapmaker's own release notes and documentation. We did not cross-check it against independent testing, so claims about stability and performance are the vendor's, not ours.

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