A Visual Tour

Smooth Gaming

New features like multiple full-screen windows per workspace, game launch fixes and input protocols additions smooth the COSMIC gaming experience. More gaming improvements are in the works.

Frosted Glass

Frosted Glass creates a more organic and immersive desktop experience. Customize the effect to suit your style in Settings > Desktop > Appearance > Frosted Glass.

Subtle and balanced

See-through

Nearly opaque

Consistent Corners

Non-COSMIC apps match the system corner style preference. GNOME and KDE apps blend well with COSMIC apps. Over time KDE apps may start supporting the Wayland blur protocol improving cross-desktop appearance.

Workspaces Overview Search

Type to search apps in the Launcher or Application Library directly from the Workspaces Overview. Set your preference in Settings > Desktop > Workspaces.

Launcher search

Application Library search

Workspaces Cycling Option

Cycle from the last to first workspace or stop at the last workspace. Set your preference in Settings > Desktop > Workspaces.

New COSMIC System Monitor

A birds eye view of your system resources. 

View all your resources and the top process for each resource from the Dashboard.

Resource detail pages show detailed graphs and top processes to give the resource graphs more context.

New Features Throughout

Features, quality improvements, and productivity enhancements abound since the initial release seven months ago.

Ellipses Text

COSMIC Text (our pure Rust text handling library) gained ellipses support and it’s been implemented throughout the desktop.

Tab, Drag and Drop in COSMIC Applications

Grab, drag and drop tabs in COSMIC Files, COSMIC Edit, and COSMIC Terminal.

New COSMIC Files Feature

COSMIC Files has become faster, more productive, and more privacy-conscious, with improvements to file management, navigation, and privacy controls.

• Automatically select filename until the extension in rename and save dialog
• Setting for type to select the first matching file or folder
• Ability to enter network paths in the breadcrumb bar
• Tab and shift-tab completion when path editing in the breadcrumb bar
• Add open button in the Details pane when multiple files are chosen
• Open multiple directories in separate tabs
• “Move to” and “Copy to” context menu items
• “Move to” and “Copy to” in the Edit menu
• Setting to toggle the Recents feature
• Add button to clear Recents
• Add Clear Recents history to Recents nav bar context menu
• Support pasting images, videos, and text from clipboard
• Add context menu option to copy path when holding shift
• New windows open at the location of the currently active tab
• Implement search in Recents and Trash
• Setting for open-with and permissions for multiple selected items
• Add text file previews
• Tab drag and drop

New COSMIC Terminal Features

COSMIC Terminal gives you more control over how you work, with configurable shortcuts, improved tab workflows, and enhanced support for different input methods.

• Hold shift and click to add to a selection
• Add --working-directory argument
• “Copy link” added to context menu
• Configurable shortcuts
• Tab drag and drop
• Option to open new tabs in current directory
• Option to open new windows in the current directory
• IME support

New COSMIC Settings Features

COSMIC Settings makes personalization and system management easier with improved search, networking, and customization options. Reassign your Caps Lock key to better match the way you work.

• Type to search
• Screen reader shortcut Super+Alt+S
• Support for 2FA VPN connections
• Option to apply RON theme files via the CLI
• Wi-Fi: Add search functionality for filtering wifi networks
• Option to swap control with caps lock
• Setting to toggle workspace wrapping
• Passkey/pin display dialog for bluetooth keyboard pairing

New COSMIC Player Features

COSMIC Player offers a smoother viewing experience with continuous playback, quick skip controls, and smarter audio handling.

• Play next file automatically
• Skip forward and backward playback controls
• Playback speed options
• Playback frame by frame controls
• Mute when thumbnailing
• Unmute when changing volume

And Many More Features and Improvements

• Cosmic Applets

  • Use ellipsis
  • Display battery applet when there is no battery
  • Integrate nmrs for VPN, airplane mode, and secret agent

• COSMIC Application Library

  • Reorder groups using drag and drop

• COSMIC Comp

  • Sticky windows stay on top of fullscreen windows
  • Windows shadows
  • New options in Settings > Desktop > Appearance > Experimental settings:
    • Match system corners and apply shadows in floating mode
    • Match system corners in tiling mode
    • Apply shadows in tiling mode
  • Preserve fullscreen state when moving window between workspaces
  • Allow layout switching and brightness/volume control hotkeys under session lock
  • Implement pointer constraints protocol, which fixes cursor issues with video games
  • Support multiple fullscreen windows per workspace, which also stops steam big picture mode from unmaximizing after launching a game
  • Full screen game launch improvements

• COSMIC Edit

  • Implement shift plus mouse click text selection
  • Tab drag and drop
  • Hide the scrollbar when it is not needed
  • Close application when last tab is closed

• COSMIC Initial Setup

  • Now supports situations where the user has multiple displays plugged in on initial setup
  • Activate screen reader by default. Users that require the screen reader won’t need to know or lookup the shortcut to activate the screen reader.
  • Reorganize settings on the page to address user testing that revealed users would pass the first page without disabling the screen reader. The setting is now first and more prominent.

• COSMIC Launcher

  • Ellipsize name and description

• Cosmic Notifications

  • Parse html markup to rich text

• COSMIC Panel

  • Increase autohide smoothness

• COSMIC Screenshot

  • Remember last selected screenshot region

• Cosmic Settings Daemon

  • Support Qt theme generation with qt5ct & qt6ct (for KDE apps)
  • Support external monitor brightness using DDC/CI

• COSMIC Store

  • Wide performance improvements
  • Add mouse back navigation
  • Concurrently fetch backends
  • Add rpm-ostree backend
  • Allow opening RPM files

• Cosmic Workspaces

  • Use ellipsis
  • Add middle mouse support to close top-level applications

• xdg-desktop-portal-cosmic

  • Do not abort portal backend if dma-buf support is missing
  • Set pipewire data flags for memfd, potentially fixes issues with OBS screen cast
  • Only save config when rectangle drag ends
  • Add hotkeys Ctrl+C to copy to clipboard and Ctrl+S to copy to Pictures
  • Screenshot: Support XDG_SCREENSHOTS_DIR and Screenshots subfolder
  • Use oo7-portal as secret portal by default
  • Make the cursor show by default in screencast

• Plus thousands more bits of polish throughout

Stay tuned

COSMIC development moves fast. Features are delivered as they’re completed, and we’re working on new features large and small that will surprise and delight users.

COSMIC DE from Scratch

From years of foundational work to a steady stream of rapid releases, COSMIC has evolved at an incredible pace.

About Us

System76 is the only open-source computing company building a full-stack Linux ecosystem – from hardware and firmware to operating system and desktop environments. System76 combines in-house manufacturing, repairable design, open firmware, privacy-respecting Pop!_OS, and COSMIC for a completely customizable out-of-the-box Linux experience that scales with you.