We understand how important background blur is for many design workflows. Right now, adding it directly would require us to build a temporary solution that would soon become obsolete. Instead of doing double work, we are waiting for the new render engine to be developed.
Is there a workaround in the meantime?
Yes. Renan has created a video tutorial (in portuguese) showing how you can achieve a similar effect today using Penpot’s existing features. This way you can get close to the result you need while we work on the long-term solution.
Penpot doesn’t have “missing” background blur; they just don’t want to ship a half-finished version. With the current browser-based render pipeline, blur would be a hack that would be useless once the new render engine comes out. That engine is what makes it possible to blur the background correctly without slowing down performance or breaking svg/export compatibility.
The workaround works for now, but it’s not perfect. Waiting means that Blur gets done right the first time and fits Penpot’s architecture instead of fighting it.
