The COSMIC desktop environment has already made a strong impression and attracted a growing following. Still, there’s no denying that many things need to be fixed or added before it truly feels complete and polished.
And even though version 1 has officially been declared stable (the current release is 1.0.3), many users feel it doesn’t quite live up to that label yet. The good news is that System76 is taking a rolling update approach, delivering smaller, incremental improvements rather than waiting for major releases.
And recently, something genuinely exciting was revealed, an upcoming addition that’s set to be added to the desktop environment.
In a post on X, Carl Richell, CEO of System76, has shared early work-in-progress visuals of frosted-glass effects being explored for the COSMIC desktop environment. Later, early previews also appeared on Reddit. Just look at this beauty.
As you can see in the image above, the window backgrounds remain partially transparent, blurring the content behind them and allowing the desktop wallpaper or other windows to show through softly without affecting readability. And I can’t help but agree that it looks great.
In the same thread, Richell also addressed feedback related to desktop behavior and animations, confirming that additional desktop animations are planned. Which is welcome, because, if we’re being honest, animations are almost completely absent currently from the COSMIC desktop environment.
Finally, Richell also confirmed that an issue where Bluetooth automatically re-enabled after system restarts has been fixed.
And now for the question everyone is probably asking: when will these features arrive in COSMIC? For now, System76 hasn’t committed to any specific timeline or release. That said, since active development is already underway, it’s reasonable to expect they’ll start showing up within the next few months.
If they did this, I’m immediately onboard. Looks sick!
There are weird keyboard shortcut bugs. E.g., for system shortcuts, my super key is not being detected at all.
Hopefully shiny stuff development doesn’t detract from fixing basic bugs and adding basic features that every other full-featured DE has.
1. They do both
2. My super key works fine with shortcuts, on 3 different keyboards (don’t ask), but that is indeed a serious problem, hope it ends up working for you
3. Not sure what you mean by full-featured DE, as for example Cosmic is already a lot more featured than Gnome 3/40+ has ever been
Why are they posting on X? Why would they support such trash? Makes me want to remove Cosmic off my laptop…
Because there are a lot of users there.
Finally there is a Linux desktop environment looks modern
Ugh. It would be better if System76 focused on stability and application features, not special effects. Are they not seeing the negativity that Apple is getting for Liquid Glass?
Nobody complained about frosted glass blur used in the previous versions of iOS/MacOS, in fact that’s what close to everyone ricing is trying to achieve all the time. This is not Liquid Glass and you’ll have the option to either configure it or disable entirely
I am just loving this rolling release of updates, almost everyday! Animations and stuff aren’t really my thing, i usually switch them all off. Excited for when they start adding more settings and features that will help me work!
Holy smokes. Cosmic immediately rose to the top 3 of Linux desktop environments alongside KDE and Hyprland, but with every point release, they are showing Gnome how it’s all done. This is everything users (of Gnome) ever wanted (and felt frustrated Gnome never offered).
2026 is definitely shaping up as the year of the Cosmic (and Hyprland) desktop.