Raspberry Pi has published its April 2026 update (2026-04-14) for Raspberry Pi OS, now available for download. Under the hood, the release ships with updated Raspberry Pi firmware and Linux kernel 6.12.75.
A notable change is that passwordless sudo is disabled by default. For users who want that behavior, Raspberry Pi added a switch to enable it in the Control Centre’s System tab and in raspi-config. On the desktop side, the update introduces a new Main Menu tab in Control Centre for editing the main menu, replacing the Alacarte menu editor.
In the menu, applications now launch using standard gtk-launch code, while the Run and Shutdown entries are packaged applications instead of hard-coded items. Raspberry Pi also added new launcher and task list plugins for the taskbar, with the launcher supporting drag-and-drop reordering of icons.
The update also changes Chromium and system integration. uBlock Origin Lite and h264ify are now installed in Chromium by default, and libpam-gnome-keyring is included to better integrate Chromium password management with the system password. Plus, the Desktop tab in Control Centre now lets users display the home folder on the desktop instead of the documents folder.
Audio handling has shifted further toward PipeWire. PulseAudio is no longer installed by default, and the raspi-config option to enable it has been removed. In addition, direct PipeWire audio control is now integrated into the first-boot wizard.
Regarding printer discovery, the cups-browsed service no longer runs continuously in the background and instead starts and stops through Control Centre. The release also improves popup window behavior, desktop close detection, and general responsiveness.
On the bug fixes side, Raspberry Pi addressed missed keystrokes when opening the main menu search box, touchscreen configuration issues under X, oversized Control Centre windows when an SD card was mounted, incorrect mouse cursor rendering with screen scaling, and crashes affecting the file manager and greeter when switching TTYs.
For more information, refer to the changelog. You can download the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS from the project’s website. It continues to support a wide range of devices, including the Raspberry Pi 3B, 3B+, 3A+, 4B, 400, 5, 500, 500+, CM3, CM3+, CM4, CM4S, CM5, and the Zero 2 W.
