System76 has released COSMIC Desktop 1.0.9, the latest update to its new desktop environment. One of the headline changes is an update to the Iced UI toolkit used across COSMIC. According to the release notes, this brings performance improvements along with better animation and input method support.
The file manager receives significant user-focused updates. COSMIC Files now supports search in Recents and Trash, opens new windows at the active tab’s location, preserves modified timestamps for ZIP archives, and adds ‘open item location’ to search.
It also introduces open-with and permissions settings for multiple selections, and resolves issues with MIME type filtering, dialog button focus, clipboard file reads, and the show_recents setting.
COSMIC Settings receives several enhancements, including Wi-Fi search for network filtering, improved Bluetooth device list behavior, and clearer separation of Bluetooth connection and pairing states. The update also fixes keyboard repeat delay and rate sliders, improves theme import and reset syncing in Appearance, deduplicates OpenGL GPU names in About, and refines text layout.
Security improvements include hardening for COSMIC Greeter. Distributions were notified to allow timely patching outside regular release cycles. The greeter update also corrects the last selected user state.
Additional updates include text ellipsizing and middle-click support for closing top-level applications in COSMIC Applets, as well as a fix for a potential status-area issue. Plus, the launcher now ellipsizes names and descriptions.
Apart from that, COSMIC Notifications now supports HTML markup in rich text, COSMIC Player adds repeat and frame-stepping controls, and COSMIC Term resolves interface issues such as pane resizing crashes and a persistent ‘Copy link’ highlight bug.
Lower-level updates include removing PackageKit from COSMIC Store’s default features. In light of this, distributions must now compile with the packagekit feature to include this backend.
Finally, COSMIC Workspaces resolves Vulkan issues, and xdg-desktop-portal-cosmic adds support for XDG_SCREENSHOTS_DIR and the Screenshots subfolder, along with improved settings and screencast handling.
For more information, see the changelog.
COSMIC Desktop 1.0.9 packages are expected to arrive in the repositories of rolling-release distros such as Arch, openSUSE Tumbleweed, CachyOS, and others shortly. Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS users can already get it as an update.
