Noctalia 5 has reached stable status, with version 5.0.1 marking the end of the project’s testing and beta phase.
For those unfamiliar, it is a desktop shell designed for Wayland environments, providing many of the pieces normally expected in a modern desktop workflow, including a panel, widgets, launcher, notifications, control center, wallpaper controls, and other desktop integrations.
A notable addition in Noctalia 5.0.1 is support for local vdir calendars and vdirsyncer-based calendar accounts. Noctalia can monitor the corresponding directories for changes, allowing calendar data to update without manual refreshes.
The window switcher gained an optional Most Recently Used ordering mode. When enabled, windows are presented by how recently they were accessed rather than their existing order.
Several smaller improvements have landed in Noctalia’s bar and widgets. The workspaces widget can now hide focus-hint icons, the Bluetooth widget disappears automatically when the adapter is off, and the weather widget shows apparent temperature alongside the regular temperature.
Wallpaper management improved, allowing you to add the active wallpaper directly to favorites from the wallpaper panel.
Noctalia 5.0.1 also expands theme customization. Applications can use their own dark or light theme mode independently of the shell’s color palette, and template hooks can run asynchronously, allowing some operations to complete more efficiently.
Beyond new features, much of the release focuses on polishing existing functionality. Bluetooth pairing handles DisplayPasskey requests more reliably, and the desktop calendar respects configured date and time formats.
There are also fixes affecting notifications, dock behavior, fractional scaling, the Control Center, clipboard handling, screenshots, brightness controls, the launcher, and the window switcher.
Wayland-specific behavior gets attention too. Blur handling has been updated for compatibility with wayland-protocols 1.45, while Noctalia’s privacy indicator can now detect screen capture activity performed through xdg-desktop-portal-wlr.
Other improvements include better timezone handling, fixes preventing blank clock formats from crashing the widget, proper WebP/VP8X album artwork decoding for Navidrome-style cover URLs, and improvements to Electron application theming.
Finally, the launcher now starts pinned applications when clicked, and its input field resets only when edited, not whenever focus changes. Plus, smart auto-hide bars no longer unexpectedly appear during workspace switches when set to remain hidden.
For additional details, see the changelog.
