The development of the COSMIC desktop environment continues to progress steadily , as evidenced by the release of versions 1.6 and 1.7 in recent weeks. These versions introduce a wide range of features, visual optimizations, and stability fixes across its various components.
These updates focus on polishing the user experience, improving compatibility with input protocols, and refining system resource management, integrating solutions ranging from the file manager to the graphic compositor and configuration tools.
Visual improvements, accessibility and home screen
In version 1.7.0, the visual and accessibility aspects have received some improvements. The graphics compositor (cosmic-comp) now allows cursors to be scaled without loss of sharpness , preventing them from becoming blurry when their size increases. To facilitate pointer placement on large screens or multi-monitor setups, an option has been added to the settings that temporarily enlarges the cursor size when the user shakes it quickly.
In addition, the system now ensures the screen turns on automatically when the device is unlocked and improves the consistency of the zoom level with each keystroke. Regarding wallpaper customization, new official designs featuring the COSMIC logo have been added.
In addition, Cosmic-greeter has also been updated and is now capable of processing background images in high-compression formats such as JPEG-XL and AVIF . Interaction issues have been resolved, allowing login to proceed even if the PAM module returns a non-critical error message, and a rule has been implemented to make the system ignore login attempts with empty passwords. It is also worth noting that the manager now detects the presence of logind at runtime, improving compatibility with different boot configurations on Linux distributions.
File manager and text editors
The file manager (cosmic-files) now allows you to search for applications directly from the "Open with" dialog box and makes it easier to navigate to network locations from anywhere on the system. File name alignment issues within the grid view have also been resolved, and the option to rename saved items in the Favorites sidebar has been enabled. On the performance front, navigation on network file systems has been optimized, and the endless dialog boxes that appeared when mounting a remote drive failed have been eliminated.
In the code and text editor (cosmic-edit), the tab logic was modified so that the program only selects a different tab if the currently active one is closed.
To avoid unnecessary actions, the cut and copy buttons in context menus are automatically disabled if there is no shaded text. This editor, along with the terminal emulator (cosmic-term) and the file manager, now features reduced screen redraws in input fields, integrated full context menus, and subpixel coordinate rounding for character backgrounds. Specifically, the terminal now allows users to configure their own borders.
Protocols, remote access, and system configuration
Work on the compositor and desktop portals brings exciting new technical features. Update 1.6.0 added support for the wl-dmabuf-v6 protocol and the EI (Emulated Input) protocol, paving the way for complex simulated input. Version 1.7.0 further enhances this with the implementation of the remote desktop portal in xdg-desktop-portal-cosmic. This feature allows tools like Steam Input to control the system's keyboard and mouse, facilitating integration with game controllers and streaming applications. Additionally, a bug that occasionally prevented screenshots from being copied to the clipboard was fixed in the same portal.
Cosmic-settings-daemon fixed a false low battery alert that was displayed on desktop computers that were missing a battery, and fixed a critical bug that caused the system to crash when receiving a brightness value of -1.
In the networking and sound section, AC power connection events are now monitored directly through upower, application-specific sound settings can be adjusted, and a 128-millisecond delay was applied to volume updates to prevent saturation.
The settings manager (cosmic-settings) fixed a bug that reset the refresh rate to default values ​​when moving windows between monitors and restored the back navigation button on the Bluetooth page when the computer has multiple adapters. Finally, the COSMIC session (cosmic-session) has been rewritten to be POSIX-compliant, removing its strict dependency on the Bash interpreter.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more, you can find the details at the following link.