Adobe Captivate (13.0) release notes

What's new and changed in this release

Release date: November 3, 2025

Adobe Captivate 13.0 makes course creation faster and smarter with generative AI tools and seamless PowerPoint import. Create interactive eLearning modules from presentations, generate text, images, transcripts, and avatar narrations. This release also enhances accessibility, introduces audio support in widgets, and includes key bug fixes to improve stability.

Explore all new features and enhancements on the What's new in Adobe Captivate page or visit the Captivate downloads page and try out the latest release.

Bug fixes in this update

Adobe Captivate (13.0) fixed the following bugs:

Accessibility

• Main content tab order: Removed unnecessary tab stop on the main content region (role="main"). Keyboard navigation now starts at the top bar, with an option to skip directly to the main content.
• Quiz feedback accessibility: The close button on quiz result banners now uses descriptive labels (e.g., “Close message” or “Close and continue”) instead of a generic “Close,” improving clarity for screen reader users and assistive technologies.
• Quiz accessibility roles: Screen readers now announce single-correct answer options as radio buttons (instead of checkboxes), while multiple-correct questions continue to use checkboxes for clarity.
• Quiz prefixes: Screen readers now announce alphabetical labels (e.g., “A.”, “B.”) for answer options on checkbox and matching question slides, ensuring clear identification and improved navigation for visually impaired users.
• Image accessibility: Previously, inner SVG elements in course images were picked up by screen readers in Adobe Captivate, but these SVGs did not contain any accessibility text. With this release, these SVG elements are now hidden from screen readers using appropriate attributes (e.g., aria-hidden="true"), ensuring that non-informative graphics no longer disrupt or clutter the experience for visually impaired users.
• TOC toggle accessibility: The Table of Contents button now uses ARIA attributes to announce its open or closed state to screen readers, ensuring clear navigation for assistive technology users.
• Playbar accessibility: Playbar buttons now use a valid “button” role and correct tabindex settings, allowing screen readers and keyboard users to identify them as interactive controls for smoother navigation.
• Playbar keyboard navigation: When the playbar is opened, keyboard focus now moves directly to the first interactive control, ensuring logical focus order and easier navigation for screen reader and keyboard users.
• Playbar toggle accessibility: The playbar toggle button now uses ARIA attributes (aria-expanded, aria-controls) to announce its open or closed state to screen readers, improving clarity and navigation for assistive technology users.
• Flip card accessibility: Content on the back of a flip card is now hidden from screen readers and keyboard navigation until the card is visually flipped, preventing premature access and ensuring proper navigation.
• ARIA label correction: Screen readers now announce the correct course module title instead of misleading labels (e.g., “SCORM12”), ensuring accurate context for visually impaired users.
• Color contrast compliance: The text in the tab component and the blue "Start" button did not have sufficient color contrast against their backgrounds, failing WCAG AA accessibility standards. This made the text difficult to read for users with visual impairments. Authors can now modify the "Solid Fill" color and text color themselves, allowing them to achieve a compliant color contrast ratio.
• Screen reader improvements: Matching dropdown (combo box) questions in Adobe Captivate had ARIA attributes referencing invalid or nonexistent element IDs. This release allows screen readers and other assistive technologies to properly track focus and active choices during quiz interactions.

Widgets

• Accordion image scaling: In Adobe Captivate version 12.6, when users added text to an Accordion widget, the images within the widget would appear extremely small. Now, when users add text to an Accordion widget, the images retain their sizes and are easily viewable.
• Accordion widget upgrade: When users upgraded a project from Adobe Captivate 12.5 to 12.6, any slides containing the Accordion widget would trigger a "Something went wrong" error during preview or when viewing the published output, both locally and in the LMS. Upgraded projects with Accordion widgets now work correctly, and users no longer encounter errors in preview or published output.
• Tab widget fill: When users added a Tab widget and enabled a card, changing the solid fill color of the content section did not have any effect. The selected color was not visible at runtime. Users can now successfully apply and see solid fill colors in the content section of the Tab widget at runtime.

Hotspots

• Hotspot visibility in preview: Hotspot elements on slides in Adobe Captivate 12.5/12.6 would disappear or display incorrectly when using the Previous button to navigate from a slide without hotspots to a slide with hotspots during preview mode. In this release, when navigating between slides, hotspots appear as expected in their intended positions.
• Hotspot positioning in responsive layouts: Hotspots placed on images now retain their correct position across all responsive views (desktop, tablet, mobile) during preview and in published output.
• Hotspot overlap in preview: In Adobe Captivate 12.6, hotspots overlapped callout content during project preview and publish. This layout issue made it difficult for learners to see callout information. With the fix, callout content now remains visible and is no longer overlapped by hotspots during preview or in published output.
• Hotspot position after resizing: When resizing the project resolution, hotspots added to slides would shift position unexpectedly in both the edit area and at runtime. In this release, hotspots now retain their original position when the project size or resolution is changed, both in the authoring mode and at runtime.

Video and media

• Video playback pause: Users experienced an issue where pausing the timeline via an interaction button did not pause the playback of a slide video. In this release, clicking the interaction button now correctly pauses both the timeline and the video playback.
• Blur component rendering: When a simulation project slide background is replaced after adding a blur component to it, the blur effect does not render correctly at runtime. In this release, the blur object renders correctly at runtime even when the slide background has been replaced.
• Blur object in review: When users shared a Captivate simulation project for review, any blur objects that were supposed to redact/obscure content (e.g., for PII protection) would disappear in the "share for review" mode, even though the blur was visible in normal preview/publish. In this release, the blur object is rendered correctly when the project is shared for review.
• Embedded iframe scaling: When embedding a web object using an iframe with width: 100% in the style attribute, the iframe was not rendered with full width inside the project. The iframe with width: 100% is now displayed at the full container/project width.

Other bug fixes

• Hyperlink validation: Previously, some long or complex URLs were not accepted as hyperlinks in Adobe Captivate 12.6, restricting users’ ability to link to detailed resources (such as policy documents or reference sites). Users can now add long and complex URLs as hyperlinks in Adobe Captivate 13.0 without restriction.
• CSV import: When importing a CSV file in Captivate, any quiz question stem or answer options that included double quotes (") were skipped and not imported. All questions now import correctly, and the count displayed matches the actual number of inserted questions.
• Font style import: When importing content into Adobe Captivate, key formatting details, like font styles (Bold, Italic, Regular, Bold Italic), font size, and bullet point formatting, were not correctly preserved. In this release, formatting issues have been resolved. Indentation and new lines (empty paragraphs) are now preserved.
• Character conversation export: When exporting project content in Adobe Captivate, if a slide contained a character conversation (speech bubble) that was set to hidden, the hidden conversation was still included in the exported file. In this release, only visible conversations are now exported. Hidden speech bubbles are no longer included in the exported file.
• Content export accuracy: When exporting project content from Adobe Captivate, all elements of media blocks, content slides, and widgets were exported, even if only some elements were selected for display on the slide. Now, only the selected/visible elements of media blocks, content slides, and widgets are exported. Unselected elements are omitted from the export.
• Slide navigation: Users could not traverse to the next slide in a project using the playbar next button, table of contents, or interactive buttons. This made navigation impossible and blocked progress through the module. Now, users can proceed to the next slide after interacting with the image and/or the input field as intended.

System requirements

Check the System Requirements for Adobe Captivate 13.0.

Update to the latest version

After clicking Help > Check for Updates, the error message, Error 184, may display.

Follow the steps below to resolve the issue:

1. In any version of Captivate 12, select Help > Check for Updates.
2. Once the update is visible, close the Adobe Captivate app.
3. Select Update now.