Here's a summery of major features and improvements with each major/minor release of Umbraco CMS, you can see this as an overview of the great detailed release information that Umbraco HQ provides with each release.
Umbraco 7.0
Released: 2013-11-21
A major release that introduced the new AngularJS-based backoffice, new "property editors" for data types and a lot of improvements in the editor experience.
Umbraco 7.1
Released: 2014-04-03
This release was mainly a "polish"-release that fixed bugs and brought features that did not make it into 7.0.
- Image Cropper in the core
- Breadcrumbs and warnings (discard changed-dialog when leaving a view without saving)
- Change document type
- API: MemberService introduced.
Umbraco 7.2
Released: 2014-12-04
- Grid property editor was added
- Responsive preview mode (switch between desktop, mobile and tablet)
Umbraco 7.3
Released: 2015-09-29
- Improved load balancing
- Upgrade to MVC5 & WebApi2
Umbraco 7.4
Released: 2016-02-11
- New Content Type (Document Type) editor
- Models Builder
Umbraco 7.5
Released: 2014-08-17
- Health Check dashboard introduced
- 301 redirect manager
- Image Processor security improvements
- Password recovery for backoffice
- Package Installer UI updated and "target version" for packages.
- Sortable property types in list views
Umbraco 7.6
Released: 2017-05-02
- New editor for scripts and templates
- Content/media/members-pickers (property editors) was improved
- Color-changes to backoffice UI
- List View Pickers
- UDIs was introduced
Umbraco 7.7
Released: 2017-09-19
This release introduced the new "User Management" and also changed some of the details around how users and passwords are stored. This version is "milestone" when upgrading old sites, I've had to install this specific version to the things right.
- New User Management, more focus on settings on User Groups
- Invite Users
- Multiple Start Nodes
- Big UI-improvements
- Introduced "Content Templates"
- New starterkit
- Scheduled Health Checks
- Includes Nested Content in the core
- ISerachableTree-interface for custom search in the tree
Umbraco 7.8
Released: 2018-02-06
- Backoffice Tours introduced (Step-by-step introductions/support)
- The "Info"-tab replaced the "Generic Properties"-tab
- Improvements to Load Balancing
Umbraco 7.9
Released: 2018-02-27
This released was called the "GDPR-release" and introduced some tooling around "consent" from visitors.
- The ConsentService API was introduced
- Logging of User actions in the backoffice was improved
- Member properties can be marked as "Sensitive Data" and hidden from some backoffice User Groups.
- Export Member data to a file
Umbraco 7.10
Released: 2018-03-27
This release does not contains a lots of features and was probably release to be able to ship the breaking change with TypedContent and Guids.
- Improved performance for querying UmbracoHelper.TypedContent with Guids
- Dropdown property editor was improved
Umbraco 7.11
Released: 2018-06-19
- See where Composition Content Types are being used
- Dictionary Tree modernized (aka moved from WebForms to AngularJS)
- Multilingual tours
- Cancel-events from ContentService-event handlers now shown to the user.
Umbraco 7.12
Released: 2018-08-14
- Folders for Content Types (aka Document Types)
- Nested Content filtering content types
- Visual Color Picker for content type colors
Umbraco 7.13
Released: 2019-01-08
The "Community-release" with 172 improvements, bug fixes and so on.
- SVG-support for media / media pickers
- Better image search
- Media item deletion detection (the "Trashed"-alert on media that has been deleted)
- Media file type indicators (icons for doc,pdf etc)
- Performance improvements, site-startup
- UX: Color pickers improvements
Umbraco 7.14
Released: 2019-03-12
- Multi Url Picker added to Core
- Helth Check for TLS 1.2
- UX-improvements to Image Cropper, SVG, Toggles and more
Umbraco 7.15
Released: 2019-07-09
The final Umbraco version 7 minor release. NOTE! This version was patched with 7.15.1 due to a bug in the media tree.
- .NET Framework update to 4.5.2
- New Preview engine
- Updates to EntityService (breaking)
- Pickers: "Ignore User Start Nodes"-setting
- Bugfixes for CPU usage when not running the backoffice on the /umbraco-route
Umbraco 8.0
Released: 2019-02-26
A new major-version of Umbraco with lot's of updates and breaking changes. A cleaned up code base where all legacy code (aka WebForms) has been removed.
- New backoffice UI
- Introduced "Infinite Editing" - edit doctypes, media and content in a "modal" and not switch context.
- Language Variants - Native support for 1:1-translations in the core
- Removed all dynamics, UmbracoTemplatePage etc
- Introduced "NuCache", no more XML (umbraco.config)
- Introduced Composition and Components for startup and Dependency Injection
Umbraco 8.1
Released: 2019-07-09
- Improved editor experiance
- Nested Content - Copy & Paste
- Easier access to MiniProfiler by a Settings-dashboard switch.
- Ignore User Start Nodes
- Accessibility improvements
- Models Builder updates
- Introduces IPublishedPropertyType, breaking change for PropertyValueConverters
Umbraco 8.2
Released: 2019-10-15
A total of 91 features and fixes in this release.
- Rich Text Editor enhancements
- Performance / loading time improved
- Drag and drop images
- Copy/paste from Word improved
- Improved cache performance and stability
Umbraco 8.3
Released: 2019-11-12
A small minor release with a major feature added.
- Allowing to change the culture of a language (ie. dialects English UK to English US)
- Disable renaming for built in User Groups
Umbraco 8.4
Released: 2019-12-10
A maintenance-release with dataType-tracking added, improved backoffice search and around 180 community contributions.
- Fixes issue with outdates results from Content Service
- Fixes redirects for moved content nodes
- Allow to search by Content Guid
Umbraco 8.5
Released: 2020-01-14
The "Models Builder" in Core-release, note that there was some fast bug fix-releases after this was release.
- Added a slime down version of Models Builder in the the Umbraco Core, used to be an external package.
Umbraco 8.6
Released: 2020-03-31
Contains a lot of accessibility fixes and also bug and stability fixes and also:
- Custom validation messages for Content Types
- Media Tracking (shows where media is used)
Release details on our
Umbraco HQ-blog about the release
Umbraco 8.7
Released: 2020-09-10
The "Block List Editor"-release contains ie:
- The new Block List Editor property editor
- Segments-support at API-level
- Content Apps for Document Types
- Complex validation in property editors
Umbraco HQ-blog about the release
Umbraco 8.8
Released: 2020-10-01
Mainly the "Image Cropper in Grid" and "List view for media"-release. Includes:
- Cropping-improvements to image control in the grid
- List view's for media
- Improved support for Guid and Udi-references to content/media
- Icons as SVG
- JSON-editor for gris style/settings-configuration
Umbraco HQ-blog about the release
Umbraco 8.9
Released: 2020-10-26
The "OAuth"-release that expands extensibility points for 3rd party login providers ie. Open Id Connect.
- Extensibility-points to login using Open Id Connect ie. Facebook or Azure Active Directory
Umbraco HQ-blog about the release
Umbraco 8.10
Released: 2020-12-28
A "maintenance"-release that includes many contributions from the "Hacktoberfest 2020".
- Updates to Block List Editor
- Popups when entering preview mode in new browser tab
- Property editor "full width" editor
- Checkbox-list-editor for grid settings
- Faster content query and reduced memory consumption
Umbraco HQ-blog about the release
Umbraco 8.11
Released: 2021-01-28
A "maintenance"-release UX and accessibility
- Unattended installs
- "Remove all"-option for Multi Node Tree Picker
Umbraco HQ-blog about the release