We’ve been listening: MATLAB R2025a Prerelease update 5 now available

Posted by Mike Croucher, March 20, 2025

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The first public version of the R2025a Prerelease went live in January and today we released update 5. This update to the Prerelease is an example of a few things that we've started doing differently as of this release cycle and I wanted to take this opportunity to explore some of them today. 

Faster turnaround on Prerelease updates

In the past, we'd make a Prerelease available, gather feedback, and then deliver a final release a few months later — usually as a one-and-done process. But now, things have changed for the better!

Since the R2025a Prerelease became available at the beginning of the year, we've already rolled out five updates, with the latest one available today. This new approach allows us to act on your feedback much faster, giving you earlier access to improvements and refinements before the full release.

If you launch your copy of the R2025a Prerelease then at some point soon you'll notice the update bell will have a little red notification next to it. 

Click on this and you'll be given the opportunity to install the update. We encourage you to try out the latest update and share feedback on the areas that matter most to you. And speaking of feedback—how we gather and act on it has also improved significantly.

Discussions about the Prerelease

Not too long ago, downloading and installing a MATLAB Prerelease meant agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which prevented public discussions—even for us at MathWorks! However, we changed this policy a little while ago, allowing open conversations from the moment the Prerelease is made publicly available.

For R2025a, this shift has already led to active discussions on MATLAB Central, generating valuable feedback that has directly influenced development.

If you've participated in these discussions—thank you! Rest assured, the development team is actively reviewing your comments and using them to shape the final release.

Feedback button built directly into MATLAB

First introduced as part of the beta program for the new desktop, the Feedback button that you can find in the Resources section of the Home tab was so popular and useful that we decided to keep it permanently. 

If you are in the middle of a MATLAB session and have something to tell us, it is easier than ever to do so.

Try this latest version of the Prerelease and tell us what you think

Coming full-circle, what I'd like to encourage you to do is to try this latest version of the Prerelease and give us more feedback. If you are not sure which version you have, use the version command

version

ans = '25.1.0.2852912 (R2025a) Prerelease Update 3'

Here we can see that I'm still running Update 3 and so should update to get the latest experience.

Thank you

Thank you so much for all of your feedback so far. We are working hard to bring you the best version of MATLAB possible and your feedback is instrumental to this process. Feel free to tell us what you think in the MATLAB Central Discussion Forum, the comments section of this post or just hit the Feedback button inside the Prerelease if you want to keep your comments between us and you.  