Phosh 0.56.0 has been released as the latest update to the GNOME-based graphical shell for mobile Linux devices, introducing a new load meter plugin for the top bar that gives users a quick way to monitor system activity directly from the interface.
The release also improves app handling on immutable distro variants, allowing applications to be hidden from the app grid even when GNOME Software is not used.
Additional improvements include enabling the Syncthing plugin from Mobile Settings, notifications when apps cannot be uninstalled, faster application startup, and a fix to prevent the Bluetooth quick setting from being disabled after output changes.
Tablet users benefit from a rotating lock screen. Cutout configuration changes now apply immediately, lock screen styling is refined, and several crash and memory leak issues have been resolved.
Phoc, the Wayland compositor for Phosh, has been updated to version 0.56. It now uses wlroots 0.20.1, adds support for the xdg-toplevel-tag-v1 protocol, and includes internal improvements and fixes.
On top of that, the Stevia on-screen keyboard now allows users to set a default keyboard layout for each app, such as always using the terminal layout with Emacs.
In addition, Stevia also enables key repeat for non-modifier keys in the shortcuts bar, adds cursor keys to that shortcuts bar by default, includes locale and flavor information in layout data so Mobile Settings can use it, and switches paste handling to ext-data-control-v1.
Phosh Mobile Settings 0.56 introduces an OS updates panel to support atomic system updates on immutable distributions. The backend uses systemd-sysupdate and is enabled when the service is available.
Moreover, the settings app now uses AdwSidebar and organizes configuration tweaks into a dedicated section. The About panel displays the image version, which helps users of immutable images like BengalOS verify system updates.
Elsewhere in Mobile Settings, the Overview panel can now re-enable hidden apps, which again fits the immutable distro use case where built-in applications may not be uninstallable. Plus, the Convergence panel adds support for NexDock 2025, while the Librem 5 panel has been fixed so it can be found through search.
Other updates include translation improvements for the Phosh Tour app and fixes in xdg-desktop-portal-phosh for bookmark handling and proper dialog maximization on mobile devices.
Meanwhile, phosh-session-services 0.2 adds a new OS update check service and ensures services are correctly pulled into the session. The new phosh-first-boot 0.1 helper can automatically select the on-screen keyboard layout based on the user’s locale.
On the library side, gmobile 0.7.2 avoids leaking libexecdir into public headers and improves device rendering in tests. The pfs file selector widget also received a fix for bookmark initial state synchronization.
As for the wider stack, this release is based on GNOME 50, Calls 50.0, feedbackd 0.8.9, iio-sensor-proxy 3.9, mmsd-tng 2.6.4, ModemManager 1.25.95, and wlroots 0.20.1.
More details are available in the official release announcement.
