Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
59

A Little Bit Now, A Lotta Bit Later

from elementary Blog [alt+shift+b] in programming

In mid-March we released a big bug fix update—elementary OS 8.0.1—and since then we’ve been hard at work on even more bug fixes and some new exciting features that I’m excited to share with you today! Read ahead to find out what we’ve released recently and what you can help us test in Early Access. Quick Settings Quick Settings has a new “Prevent Sleep” toggle Leo added a new “Prevent Sleep” toggle. This is useful when you’re giving a presentation or have a long-running background task where you want to temporarily avoid letting the computer go to sleep on its normal schedule. We also fixed a bug where the “Dark Mode” toggle would cancel the dark mode schedule when used. We now have proper schedule snoozing, so when you manually toggle Dark Mode on or off while using a timed or sunset-to-sunrise schedule, your schedule will resume on the next schedule change instead of being canceled completely. Vishal also fixed an issue that caused some apps to report being improperly closed on system shutdown or restart and on the lock screen we now show the “Suspend” button rather than the “Lock” button. System Settings Locale settings has a fresh layout thanks to Alain with its options aligned more cleanly and improved links to additional settings. Locale Settings has a more responsive design We’ve also added the phrase “about this device” as a search term for the System page and improved interface copy when a restart is required to finish installing updates based on your feedback. Plus, Stanisław improved stylus detection in Wacom settings preventing a crash when no stylus is found. AppCenter We now show a small label next to the download button for apps which contain in-app purchases. This is especially useful for easily identifying free-to-play games or alt stores like Steam or Heroic Games Launcher. AppCenter now shows when apps have in-app purchases Plus, we now reload app icons on-the-fly as their data is processed, thanks to Italo. That means you’ll no longer get...
6th May 2025

Stay updated

Get a weekly newsletter with the top 5 articles worth reading every week.

More from elementary Blog

Who Monitors The Monitor?

Monitor The first release of Monitor as an elementary OS default app is here! Monitor is an app for monitoring your system resources and running processes, including with optional panel indicators. Since its last release, we’ve completed the port to GTK4, rewrote the settings menu, and a ton more under the hood. Massive thanks to Stanisław, Ryo, and more for their hard work here. Monitor running processes and available resources Monitor should be automatically installed on your next update, but if you for some reason don’t get it, you can install Monitor with the Terminal command sudo apt install io.elementary.monitor. Window Manager & Dock Another massive bug fix release of our Window Manager has landed with 19 fixed issues including improved performance, fixes for HiDPI, and better animations. We’ve fixed issues with dock menus sometimes appearing behind the dock, apps will now launch correctly when you switch between Classic and Secure sessions, and more. Blur effects have landed in the window switcher and are coming to the Dock Plus, this release introduces a new blur effect. You’ll first notice it in the Alt + Tab window switcher, but in future updates we will also blur behind the Dock and Notifications. Big thanks to Leo and Leonhard for their hard work on this release. Icons We landed a highly requested redesign of folder icons thanks to newhoa. The new folder design is more rounded and more closely matches the design of the Files app icon. Folder icons have been redesigned with rounded corners Icons featuring a computer mouse have been slightly redesigned to include a scroll wheel. And, icons featuring a mouse pointer have been updated to match the new pointer design, thanks to William. Mouse and Pointer icons have been updated Plus a number of smaller clean ups including adding missing sizes for certain icons, adjusting lighting, and rounding a few edges. Finally, we now fall back to Adwaita icons when an app is missing a non-standard icon name, thanks to David Lapshin. Code In the symbols sidebar, tooltips for C language symbols are now more information like their Vala counterparts. When you clone a git branch, we now send an unobtrusive toast to let you know cloning has completed. Global searches now respect your search case sensitivity settings. Opening a second window no longer results in duplicate project entries in the project chooser. And the “Open Folder” keyboard shortcut has been fixed. Shoutouts Jeremy for his hard work on Code. Files Jeremy also fixed a number of small issues with Files including expanding trashed folders in the list view, refreshing views properly when files are deleted, and preventing a potential freeze when the Templates folder contains too many files and subfolders. Plus, Files now shows a setting for Date & Time format. And More In Power settings we now show a small warning about increased energy usage with certain options. The Sound menu now uses a toggle icon like Quick Settings instead of a switch to quickly mute. And media keys for volume now work on the Lock Screen thanks to Leo. Get These Updates As always, pop open System Settings → System on elementary OS 8 and hit “Update All” to get these updates plus your regular security, bug fix, and translation updates. Or set up automatic updates and get a notification when updates are ready to install! Early Access We’re laser focused on preparing to release OS 8.1 so big new features will almost exclusively be targeted to OS 9 from now on. We don’t have OS 9 builds available yet for you to try, but we are working on them already! We’ll let sponsors know first when OS 9 builds are available in Early Access to test. But for now, we have just one more thing. 64-bit Universal ARM builds from the stable updates channel are now available on our Builds website. These builds replace the old device-specific builds for platforms like Raspberry Pi and Pinebook, plus they add support for other ARM devices supported by Linux. This is thanks to the hard work of NN708 who has been dedicated to seeing this project through over the several months it took to complete. Sponsors At the moment we’re at 24% of our monthly funding goal and 324 Sponsors on GitHub! Shoutouts to everyone helping us reach our goals here. Your monthly sponsorship funds development and makes sure we have the resources we need to give you the best version of elementary OS we can! Monthly release candidate builds and daily Early Access builds are available to GitHub Sponsors from any tier! Beware that Early Access builds are not considered stable and you will encounter fresh issues when you run them. We’d really appreciate reporting any problems you encounter with the Feedback app or directly on GitHub.

5th Nov 2025 • 11 votes
More Apps, More Features, More Cowbell!

Hot off the release of OS 8.0.2, we’ve got a great new batch of feature updates for you as we get closer to the release of elementary OS 8.1! Maps The first stable release of elementary Maps is now available for download on any Linux OS. For now we’ve focused on some of the basics like showing your current location, searching for locations, and handling geo:// uri links. You may recall that Maps evolved from the Atlas code base originally written by Steffen Schuhmann for elementary OS. Ryo has worked hard to maintain the code and update it for the latest platform libraries like GTK4. Since the rename, we’ve updated the app to match the latest elementary styles and design conventions. We’ve also added an illustrated view switcher between Explore and Transit maps and when you search you’ll see color coded place type icons next to search results. Keyboard navigation,screen reader accessibility, and performance should also be slightly improved. Plus we have a modernized app icon, shoutouts to Micah for providing art direction. Get Maps on AppCenter AppCenter On the Home page, the “Updates & installed apps” button is now properly labeled for screen readers. We’ve fixed a minor visual bug with banner shadows. And the “Education” category now has an icon. In app info views, we now show a simple percentage-based app rating when ratings are available from ODRS—the same ratings server used by apps like GNOME Software. Expect future versions of AppCenter to expand our support for ratings and reviews, but for now we have some groundwork laid out. App info views also now show content warnings with a more compact layout. Italo updated our “End of Life” warnings to contain more accurate language, and licensing information now shows more detail and a simplified summary. Plus, we now show when a game supports playing with controllers. Leonhard added support for app addons, and we’ve simplified the “What’s New” section to show just the latest release, with the option to view more releases in a separate version history window. Apps now show ratings, controller support, simplified release notes, and license summaries Leonhard did a ton of work in this release to make app updates faster and more reliable. The code has been massively streamlined and we’ve resolved reported crashes that some folks were experiencing while checking for updates. Plus we’re now using GTK 4’s FilterListModels for improved performance. The “Last checked” time is now updated every minute while the updates view is open and the gear menu can now be opened with the keyboard shortcut F10. We’ve made a few changes to the way installed apps are shown to make it easier to keep up with what’s new when you have automatic app updates turned on. Installed apps are now sorted by release date instead of alphabetically. The Releases dialog got a slight redesign and you can now see recent releases for all installed apps. And we’ve adjusted where the version number and store origin labels appear to clean up their layout. You can check past release notes for all installed apps. Occasionally, app icons can take a little longer to load; When this happens they’ll now fall back to a nicer placeholder and cross fade into their proper icons once available, thanks to Italo. We’ve changed the label of the action button for free apps from “Free” to “Install”, according to your feedback. “Recent” apps in Category views should feature a more up-to-date selection and be a bit faster to load. And Search Results will now show in two columns when enough space is available so that you can see more results at once. Dock When we ran our desktop survey 75% of you told us that you expected to see background apps in the Dock, so we now have Background Portal support in the Dock thanks to Leonhard! Here you can see a list of apps running the background without a window, their supplied reason for running the background, and you have the ability to force them to quit. You can always further manage app permissions in System Settings → Applications and choose which apps are allowed to run in the background. Background apps now show in the Dock New contributor Sebastian fixed issues with the placement of app name tooltips, added a shake animation when you try to open a new window on a single-window app with middle-click, and fixed an issue where re-arranging app icons in the dock could cause them to shake indefinitely. Leonhard fixed an issue where maximized windows would be behind a portion of the dock when hiding is turned off. And William improved the color of the indicator dot for apps which are active on another workspace. Panel & Settings In Quick Settings, we’ll now show a message when you try to turn on the onscreen keyboard in a Secure Session since it’s currently only available in a Classic session. And we’ve added a couple of nice animations when you toggle Dark Mode or Rotation Lock. Some toggles—like Rotation Lock—are now animated Vishal fixed a potential crash when using the network indicator on the Lock Screen. And we’ve improved Airplane Mode: it will now only disable networking radios, not Bluetooth or wired networks. Plus you can now jump to System Settings when middle-clicking networking toggle buttons. Application settings now has a setting to select your default Maps app, and you can start typing to search apps right away instead of having to select the search icon first. Login & Lock Screen Leo put a ton of effort into this latest release of the Login ∓ Lock Screen, including support for the automatic accent color and Dark mode! We now also sync more of your settings like panel transparency and power settings. We’ve improved keyboard navigation, and will automatically select the Classic session if accessibility features are used, for example, during Initial Setup. We’ll also do a better job of remembering your last selected user card and their session type. And More Jeremy also pushed another round of maintenance updates for our developer tools!. Files now does a better job when drag-n-dropping files into other apps, and Properties windows now show a more precise date and time for file modification. Code’s terminal pane now does a better job syncing with your Terminal app settings, and he fixed an issue where exiting a shell would break the terminal pane. In the Terminal app, he improved unsafe paste warning detection for commands that contain newlines, and the search bar now takes up a more appropriate amount of space. Get These Updates As always, pop open System Settings → System on elementary OS 8 and hit “Update All” to get these updates plus your regular security, bug fix, and translation updates. Or set up automatic updates and get a notification when updates are ready to install! Early Access We landed blur-behind in a couple of more places in Early Access! The Dock is now slightly more transparent and things behind it will be blurred. This improves legibility when for example busy text is behind the dock. And we’ve also merged some updates styles for Notifications including slight transparency, blur-behind, more rounded corners, and softer shadows. Plus Leo cleaned up Notification close animations. If you’re not a fan of transparency and blur effects, you can always turn off “Panel Transparency” in System Settings → Dock & Panel. The Dock and Notifications now have transparency and blur-behind effects Subhadeep has merged in initial support for fingerprint enrollment in User settings. We’re still working out the experience for fingerprint authentication dialogs for example, but if you have a compatible fingerprint reader you should be able to start testing support and send us feedback about what is and isn’t working. Initial support for enrolling fingerprints was merged Plus, daily and release candidate quality builds will now use the Secure Session by default. We’ve received a ton of feedback that since the updates we’ve made since the release of OS 8 have made the experience of using the Secure session much better than the Classic session for most people, including improved performance and fewer bugs encountered. So we’re really excited to make it the default experience going forward. Sponsors At the moment we’re at 24% of our monthly funding goal and 321 Sponsors on GitHub! Shoutouts to everyone helping us reach our goals here. Your monthly sponsorship funds development and makes sure we have the resources we need to give you the best version of elementary OS we can! Monthly release candidate builds and daily Early Access builds are available to GitHub Sponsors from any tier! Beware that Early Access builds are not considered stable and you will encounter fresh issues when you run them. We’d really appreciate reporting any problems you encounter with the Feedback app or directly on GitHub.

6th Oct 2025 • 15 votes
elementary OS 8.0.2 Available Now

It’s been about 6 months since our last minor release and the team has been busy! For all of the details about what’s new since OS 8.0.1, make sure to check out our posts from May until now. In this post I’ll just be covering our progress over the last month up until the release of OS 8.0.2. OS 8.1 is due to be released before year end and that post will be The Big One™ that wraps up every change since OS 8.0. So without further delay, let’s dive into what we did last month that made it in OS 8.0.2! Installer & Initial Setup The latest Installer incorporates fixes for a number of issues raised during accessibility testing. The “Before Installing”, “Try or Install”, “Choose a Disk”, and “Encryption” views should all have much improved accessible labels, things like password quality feedback will now be read aloud by the screen reader, and we fixed a couple instances where the screen reader would announce text style markup. Plus, Leo added a few more safety checks for the custom install view that should prevent crashes with certain complex partition layouts, and the Installer should now always appear centered on screen. Initial Setup also includes the same password quality feedback improvements for screen readers and it will always appear centered on screen. Plus trailing hyphens and underscores are now allowed in usernames and we use a more reliable source of information for keyboard layouts, thanks to Ryo. Music The latest release of Music includes a number of important new features for managing the queue, including performance improvements for large queues. You can now remove individual track from a track’s context menu or clear the entire queue thanks to Oowoosh0. Jeremy and Leonhard implemented searching by track name. The queue and the last played track will be saved and restored thanks to Stella, and she added the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+O to add new files. Ryan added the Ctrl+Q shortcut to quit, and album art will now show in media controls in the panel and elsewhere. Plus Oowoosh0 fixed a couple of issues with long artists names or when using large system fonts. Terminal Leo Fixed an issue that caused keyboard focus to not be inside the first tab when opening a new window, and he fixed an issue where dropping in text that contain # would be cut off. Jeremy also fixed an issue with incorrect line breaks when pasting or dropping text while a process is running, made sure to always clear process finished icons when a tab is selected, and removed an old misfeature that would cause window sizes to be odd on certain display sizes. Hardware Enablement OS 8.0.2 includes the latest long-term support Hardware Enablement stack from Ubuntu, including Linux 6.14. This new version of the Linux kernel brings improved performance—especially while gaming, reduced power consumption for certain AMD and Intel chipsets and GPUs, new security features, and support for more gamepads, wifi devices, microphones, and more. And More Main menus are now properly marked in Camera, and Videos and can be opened with the keyboard shortcut F10. In Calculator, Alain replaced the “Del” button with an icon, and the “New Window” action now shows in icon in places like keyboard shortcut settings. Trevor fixed a crash with screenshots which are much taller than they are wide and Ryo fixed an issue that caused screenshots not to be saved to custom locations. Get elementary OS 8.0.2 elementary OS 8.0.2 is available as a pay-what-you-can purchase at elementary.io today. Localized direct downloads and a torrent magnet link are provided. OS 8 FAQ Download elementary OS 8.0.2 Sponsors have been able to download OS 8.0.2 release candidates since the beginning of the month, so if getting things before anyone else is important to you, consider sponsoring us on GitHub And Even More Expect another blog post soon detailing all of the new features that have been released since OS 8.0.2 was built and what’s available to test in Early Access—there are a number of big ones!

22nd Sep 2025 • 11 votes
Developer Tools, Hardware Enablement, and Multitasking Futures

Your monthly updates post is here! This month we have a couple of releases for our developer tools, plus plenty of improvements to Bluetooth, as well as a hardware enablement boost from Ubuntu and plenty to talk about in Early Access. Let’s dive in! System Settings The previously mentioned redesign of Bluetooth Settings has arrived! This redesign not only brings a bit more visual separation between paired devices and nearby devices, but also improves the keyboard navigation and screen reader experience. Plus, you can now double click rows to activate them. We resolved an issue where sometimes devices would be duplicated in the list and fixed issues when a pairing request requires entering passcodes—like with some keyboards. You’ll now also see fewer unnamed devices when discovering, enabling and disabling Bluetooth on devices that have been hardware locked should now work reliably, and to top it all off performance when listing lots of devices has also been improved. Bluetooth settings has a new design Leonhard and Ryo fixed a couple of issues with sidebar selections when navigating directly to a setting from search. Ryo fixed an issue where Sharing Settings lost its window controls when a network was not connected. And there’s now an action to jump directly to the System Updates page from the context menu in the Dock or Applications Menu or via search. Code Working with Git projects continues to get better thanks to Jeremy! There’s now a new feature to clone git repositories directly from inside Code via the projects menu in the sidebar. The item for opening project folders has moved there as well, so managing your open projects now happens all in one place no matter where they come from. You can now clone Git projects in Code He also fixed an issue with blank tooltips appearing in empty sidebar folders, a crash when deleting selected text while using the “Highlight Selection” plugin, and a freeze when editing lists with the “Markdown” plugin. Plus, the Symbols sidebar now shows a loading spinner when searching symbols takes longer than usual, and filters have been fixed for C symbols. Terminal Terminal will now warn about pasted commands that include options to skip confirmation like -y, --interactive=never, and --force. Plus we now make sure to show all found warnings about a pasted command, not just the first one found. For example, if a command like sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y fuse is pasted, we will warn about use of admin privileges, multiple commands, and that it skips confirmations, not just that it uses admin privileges. Terminal warns about more potentially dangerous commands Corentin fixed an issue where long commands could resize windows. Jeremy fixed an issue where tab labels didn’t properly update when using screen or ssh. And he made sure we properly close tabs when using the exit command. And More A few small bug fixes for our Window Manager: Corentin resolved a potential crasher, Leo improved dock hide animations, and Leonhard fixed an issue with revealing the panel over fullscreen apps. A new Hardware Enablement stack has arrived thanks to Ubuntu! This includes Linux 6.14 and Mesa 25 which brings support for newer hardware as well as some big performance gains and potential battery life improvements. OMG! Ubuntu! breaks down all the nerdy details here Get These Updates As always, pop open System Settings → System on elementary OS 8 and hit “Update All” to get these updates plus your regular security, bug fix, and translation updates. Or set up automatic updates and get a notification when updates are ready to install! Early Access Maps Last month, Ryo made the last release of Atlas on AppCenter because we’ll soon be shipping it by default in elementary OS as Maps! As part of our work to improve the experience on computers you take with you—like notebooks and tablets—we’ve been working on features that use your location, and shipping a Maps app is part of that work. An in-development version of the new Maps Our hope with Maps is to improve support for mapping and location features in our platform libraries and to improve experiences in other apps like Tasks and Calendar as well as 3rd party apps in AppCenter. We’ve also already made a tiny improvement to the wider Freedesktop ecosystem by documenting a standard location icon used across desktops and in Portals. We’re really looking forward to getting your feedback and learning how we can improve experiences for apps that use your location in elementary OS. Window Manager & Dock First up is some new eye candy. We’ve heard requests for transparency and blur over the years and I’m happy to report we’re now experimenting with some new effects in shell elements like the alt + tab Window Switcher. We want to make sure to carefully balance shiny effects with performance and legibility, so be sure to send in your feedback. We’re also on track to apply some blur behind the Dock soon, so watch out for that. Blur effects have landed in the window switcher and are coming to the Dock Speaking of the Dock, you may have noticed that it’s now sticking around when in Multitasking View! We’ve replaced the old workspace switcher and you can now launch apps from the Dock directly into different workspaces to quickly get things set up exactly how you like. We’ve also merged in a new feature to monitor background apps that use the cross-platform Background Portal. Here you can not only manage background apps, but also see an explanation of what exactly they’re doing while running. With these features, we’re seeing years of design and development work come together: an improved way to multitask on elementary OS whether you use a mouse at your desktop, multitouch gestures on your laptop or tablet, or rely on keyboard shortcuts to get the job done. I’m extremely proud of what the team has done here and look forward from hearing more from you about it! Background apps now show in the Dock And that’s not all. Building on the previously mentioned Gesture Controller, the new Touchpad backend for multitouch gestures has also landed. This replaces Touchégg in the Secure Session as the way to track multitouch gestures, fixes bugs, and enables new features like two-dimensional swiping between workspaces and the full Multitasking View. So if you are a fan of gestures on your notebook, we’d love for you to try it out and report back before we ship it for everyone. Hardware Support Last but not least, we’re now building Universal EFI install images for ARM64 processors. This means instead of building unique ARM images for every hardware platform, we can build a single universal image for platforms like Pinebook, Raspberry Pi, and M-series Macs. These builds are still experimental and come with a few bugs, but we’d love folks to give them a spin in a virtual machine or on a spare computer and report back. If everything looks good, we may be able to offer stable ARM64 downloads starting with OS 8.1 later this year. Sponsors I want to give special thanks this month to Ryan Prior for his extremely generous one-time sponsorship! Ryan noted that this sponsorship was dedicated to the hard work of Renato who has been translating elementary OS into Brazilian Portuguese. Thanks a ton for your work Renato! At the moment we’re at 22% of our monthly funding goal and 332 Sponsors on GitHub! Shoutouts to everyone helping us reach our goals here. Your monthly sponsorship funds development and makes sure we have the resources we need to give you the best version of elementary OS we can! Monthly release candidate builds and daily Early Access builds are available to GitHub Sponsors from any tier! Beware that Early Access builds are not considered stable and you will encounter fresh issues when you run them. We’d really appreciate reporting any problems you encounter with the Feedback app or directly on GitHub.

11th Aug 2025 • 33 votes
Supporting Disability Is Our Social Responsibility

July is Disability Pride Month, an opportunity for us to consider how we’re serving our disabled community and work on breaking down barriers to access. Last year we had the pleasure of being introduced to Florian—a fully blind cybersecurity enthusiast—and thanks to his feedback we completely rewrote navigation in Onboarding to be more keyboard and screen reader friendly, as well as took another look at Installation and Initial Setup to vastly improve our entire first run experience for blind folks. Plus, we implemented the screen reader interface in the Alt + Tab window switcher. Thanks to this feedback, elementary OS 8 can be installed and set up completely blind, an important win for maintaining your independence as a person with vision disabilities. Danielle Foré Founder & CEO Wed, Jul 3, 2024 7 min read Since the release of OS 8 we’ve been working on things like improving contrast, support for Dark Mode screenshots and brand colors in AppCenter, turning on or snoozing Dark Mode without canceling your schedule, expanding the scope of the “Reduce Motion” setting, and adding more options to reduce distracting notification bubbles. Plus, thanks to feedback from Aaron who you may know from his blog series on Linux accessibility, Notifications and the Shortcut Overlay both got releases that add screen reader support. As a community that includes folks with a range of disabilities ourselves, we’re deeply invested in improving access to Open Source software. We succeed at our mission when we build open computing experiences that are available regardless of ability and fail when accessibility is considered an afterthought or a nice-to-have. This month and always, Inclusive Design is at the core of what we do and we will continue to strive towards that ideal. If you want to follow along or help us address accessibility issues in elementary OS, we’d love your help! We’re tracking issues in this GitHub project. If you discover a new issue—accessibility related or otherwise—we’d love to get your feedback and we have a handy contributor guide to help you file a report here. Code A big new release of Code is here, thanks primarily to Jeremy. This release closes 19 reported issues including a couple of crashers. The “Open in…” menu is now sorted and includes an option for the Terminal pane. Plus the Terminal pane now follows Natural Copy/Paste settings from the Terminal app. The Vala symbols pane now shows a lot more information about symbols in their tooltips. Numbered lists are now handled correctly by the Markdown plugin. The Highlight Word Selection plugin now works with selections of more than one word. Several enhancements were made to managing git branches including sorting branch names alphabetically, the ability to switch to remote branches, and you’ll now be asked how to handle uncommitted changes when switching branches. You can now create edit marks by clicking in the source view gutter. They can be jumped between via the context menu or with the keyboard shortcuts Alt + ← / →. If you’re using the Flatpak version of Code on another OS, the “Open in…” menu is no longer empty and operations that require a network should now work. Plus performance was improved in several cases. Window Manager & Dock This month Leonhard and Leo closed another 19 issue reports in our window manager, including several issues related to multi-monitor, the Multitasking View, and Dock behavior. A crash that could occur when closing LibreOffice windows was fixed. Picture-in-picture will now select the correctly window when its area selection is drawn over an app’s shadow. Non-flatpak apps that don’t correctly match their launchers can now sometimes be matched by the Dock anyways. If you have “activate hotcorners in fullscreen” turned on, you can also now access the Applications Menu with Super while playing a fullscreen game, for example. Plus we made some performance improvements to drawing shadows. System Settings In Keyboard → Shortcuts → Custom you can now choose from a list of installed apps and their actions—in addition to being able to execute custom commands—thanks to Leo. This makes it super straightforward to add a keyboard shortcut for your most common workflows like composing a new email or adding a new Calendar event. You can now create custom keyboard shortcuts for apps and their actions System Settings will also now warn you if your desired keyboard shortcut conflicts with a common system shortcut like “Copy”, “Paste”, or “New Tab”. Plus we fixed an issue that would prevent certain Housekeeping configurations from running, and the “Automatic” accent color option now works more reliably. And More The Screencast Portal now features an improved design for selecting which display or window should be captured, as well as respecting options for capturing the pointer. Plus we fixed issues that prevented screenshots from including window shadows in some cases, and screenshot notifications now open the Image Viewer when clicked. Screencasts portal has a new design Jeremy fixed a number of issues in the latest release of Files including issues related to file renaming, drag-and-drop, ejecting removable drives, and an issue activating context menus from certain parts of the sidebar. And he also fixed an issue preventing bluetooth file sharing from working. Plus, Leo made sure that panel transparency and orientation lock settings get synced to the Login & Lock screen. Get These Updates As always, pop open System Settings → System on elementary OS 8 and hit “Update All” to get these updates plus your regular security, bug fix, and translation updates. Or set up automatic updates and get a notification when updates are ready to install! Early Access Bluetooth Settings got a redesign and a reworking of its list sorting logic that should improve performance, reliability, and its screen reader experience. Especially of note, we now sort out more bluetooth devices so the list of nearby devices should be more concise and useful. Plus we fixed a few issues related to devices that require a passcode to pair, like some keyboards. This includes some fairly large changes so we could really use help testing for regressions before releasing this update for everyone. Bluetooth settings has a new design We’re also now building daily ARM64 Native images thanks to new contributer NN708. This is a universal ARM UEFI image, which means it should be a single image that runs on platforms like Raspberry Pi, Pinebook Pro, and Apple M-series Macs. This makes it a lot simpler for us to support ARM processors in future releasses of elementary OS. Please test these images on your ARM devices and report back! We now include additional processor architecture options in our issue report template to track any problems you experience. Download ARM64 Builds Sponsors At the moment we’re at 23% of our monthly funding goal and 322 Sponsors on GitHub! Shoutouts to everyone helping us reach our goals here. Your monthly sponsorship funds development and makes sure we have the resources we need to give you the best version of elementary OS we can! Monthly release candidate builds and daily Early Access builds are available to GitHub Sponsors from any tier! Beware that Early Access builds are not considered stable and you will encounter fresh issues when you run them. We’d really appreciate reporting any problems you encounter with the Feedback app or directly on GitHub.

2nd Jul 2025 • 47 votes

More in programming

George Dryden

Reading my recent computing retrospective, I realised there was a big section missing: the people in my life that made an impact and helped shape my career. Outside my immediate family, one person made an outsized contribution, and I’m fairly certain that without his influence my life would have taken a very different path. The fact that I’m still here in 2026, still writing code and being fortunate enough to have a career in something I love is testament to him. So I’d like to take a few moments to talk about my old secondary school teacher, George Dryden. Denied Back in 1995, I had a problem. I knew I wanted to study computing at university and build a career out of my passion, but there was a snag. For those unfamiliar with the UK schooling system, when you’re 15-16 you take a set of GCSE exams in a broad range of subjects. After that, you pick around 3 subjects to really focus on over a period of 2 years. These are called A Levels, and they are a big step up and are meant to prepare you for a degree-level course at university. Admission to university is also governed by these results - if you want to study computing, you’re going to need a computing A-Level, and most universities will only accept you (or “make an offer”) if you achieve a certain grade. And whilst I had taken computing at a GCSE level, my school did not offer a computing A-Level course. I instead had to settle on “Design & Technology”, which just didn’t inspire me. Instead of working on my portfolio and projects, I spent most of my time daydreaming and writing code on the Acorn Archimedes computers that were the staple of every 90s UK school. No disrespect to the teachers - they were all awesome - but it just wasn’t for me. I was miserable, and by the end of my first year, I was well on my way to failing outright with my entire future plans seemingly going up in smoke. Someone noticed That’s when George stepped in. He’d taught me computing right the way through my GCSEs, and with no A-Level course on offer, that was officially where his involvement was supposed to have ended. It didn’t. He had noticed my constant presence in the computing labs - before and after school, during lunch breaks, free “study” periods - working on some little pet project or digging into RISC OS internals. I remember him as warm, with a wicked, dry sense of humour, and a refreshingly spiky attitude to authority - I always got the sense he’d worked out for himself which rules were worth taking seriously and which ones weren’t. And he always had time for me. I spent years pestering him with questions that had nothing to do with anything on the syllabus, and he’d always find a way to answer them that actually made sense. He was just as supportive of my odd little obsessions. At one point I’d got deep into the BBS scene, which I thought was the coolest thing ever, and decided what the school really needed was an internal BBS running on its own network. So I wrote one. It was deeply cringeworthy, obviously - but George helped me put posters up around the school advertising it, and even gave it a mention in assembly one morning. I think about five people in total ever checked it out. It didn’t matter: a teacher had stood up in front of the entire school and treated my weird little project like it was worth something, and that was a hugely validating moment for me. Off the books He recognised the passion, and eventually he made a suggestion: What if I quit the Design and Technology course, and instead attempt the A-level course myself? Personally, I also suspect he was enjoying himself. There was some internal school politics behind why computing wasn’t offered at A-Level in the first place - I never knew the details - and I think the prospect of one of his students simply going out and getting the qualification anyway appealed to him on two separate levels. It would get me where I wanted to go, and it would wind up exactly the right people. It wouldn’t be easy, he warned. The school would be against it, plus it was a two-year course which I’d have to cram into one year. I’d have to do it all myself - studying, lesson planning, coursework - he couldn’t help me in an official capacity, but he said he’d advocate for me and help where he could. If I had assignments, he’d send them off to be graded and would give feedback in his own time. He’d enter me in for the exams and also gave me a set of keys to the computer lab so I could use it whenever I needed. It was the first time anybody outside my own family had really shown faith in my abilities and encouraged me to take a stand. It was a pivotal moment for me - I realised if I wanted something badly enough I would have to fight for it, but I could still make it happen. I didn’t have to take “NO” for an answer - a lesson I think I picked up from watching him as much as from anything he ever actually said to me. After a few weeks of dithering, I took the jump. I remember a few awkward meetings with the school administration but thanks to his behind-the-scenes work, I was soon following my dream. An intense year And yes, it was bloody hard work. I had to condense an entire two year course into under a year, be disciplined enough to produce my own study plan, and be critical enough of my own shortcomings that I could focus my study where it was needed. I pretty much lived and breathed it for months straight and was more-or-less a permanent fixture in the labs or school library poring over my course books. I’d make lists of questions and chat to George over lunch, and he’d provide guidance and encouragement. It was a lonely way to learn with no classmates to compare notes with, no lessons to turn up to, and right up until the end I had no real idea whether any of it was good enough - but bit by bit, it started to feel like something I could actually pull off. And sure enough, in the late spring of 1996, I sat down in an exam hall with my fellow students, the only one with an A-Level computing question paper in front of me. The final exam went by in a blur - I can only remember a few of the questions now (and a peculiar obsession with the Pascal language) - but I do remember the euphoria as the invigilator called “time’s up, pens down, close your papers NOW”. I had done it. A few nerve-wracking months later, my Mum drove me into school to pick up my results. I ripped open the envelope and saw it - I’d passed with an A grade! I literally ran up the stairs to George’s office next to the computing labs to thank him personally. I’d taken my camera into school to take a few last photos for memory’s sake and snapped this photo of him before I walked out the school gates for the last time: A different path Because of him, I managed to get into my university of choice, studying computing with a focus on networks. Because of that, I landed my first job working as a “webmaster”, and my career since has been one of the highlights of my life. All these years later, it’s a real privilege to be able to get up each morning and actively look forward to working in an industry I love. Without George stepping up for me and encouraging me to believe in myself, none of that would have happened. I wouldn’t have had the career I have, and I wouldn’t be where I am now. I met my wife when we both worked at a software company - she sat at the desk behind me - so even my home and family life can be traced back to that spring of 1996. And the A-Level itself was only half of what I took away from that year. The qualification opened the door to university, but the lesson that came with it was every bit as important: that a “no” isn’t always the end of it, and that sometimes the answer can be argued with. I’m so proud of what I managed to achieve all those years ago, and even more thankful to have had someone like George in my life to put me on the right track. Mr. Dryden I did see him again after I left. He drank in one of my local pubs - a pub I’d been going to for a good while before I was technically old enough to be in it - and I’d say hello if I spotted him in there, mostly in the months before I moved away to university. After that it was only a handful of times. For years I’d find myself scanning the room whenever I was back home and in for a pint, half expecting him to be at the bar. At some point I stopped seeing him altogether and eventually moved across the country. The trouble was I never really knew how to talk to him outside of school. He was always Mr. Dryden, or just “Sir”, I don’t think I ever once called him George to his face! I was (and still am if I’m honest) fairly socially awkward, and I never worked out how to phrase the thing I actually wanted to say: that he had changed the entire direction of my life, and I wasn’t sure he knew it. So instead I’d say hello, and ask how he was, talk about nothing much, and go back to my friends. Epilogue Sadly, 3 years ago now, I opened the latest issue of my old school alumni newsletter to read that he’d passed away. The photo at the start of this article was taken from his obituary article and I read that he’d had a long illness and had suffered from dementia at the end. I did write to him years ago by email - I don’t know if he ever got it, or was in any capacity to understand what he’d done for me, but I hope so. There’s an old saying by one of my favourite authors (Terry Pratchett) that “no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away”. In one of his books, a character keeps the memory of his son alive by passing his name along a series of telegraph towers. It’s in that spirit that I’m writing this post - I debated it for many years as it’s very personal to me and I also have no contact with any of George’s family so I have no idea what they would make of it all. But even though it’s 30+ years ago now, I will never forget him or what he did for me - and at least now, if someone searches his name it’ll be recorded here for as long as I’m alive and running this site. Thank you, Sir. George Dryden 1942-2023

3 hours ago • 1 votes
How Copy-on-Write Works with Memory-Mapped Files

Let’s step inside the kernel and understand how it implements copy-on-write and what are its implications for the performance of user-space systems

3 hours ago • 1 votes
If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?

Yesterday, I received this email as a response to You Can't Vibe Code Love. It's such a remarkable and powerful statement that I asked permission to share it here, in its entirety, with personal information redacted: Hey Jeff, Hope you and your family are doing well.

2 days ago • 1 votes
You are still valuable

A frustrated Reddit post about being a condom between an AI and production made the rounds in our team. Here is why I think the opposite is true and what it means for how we review code, plan work and think.

3 days ago • 2 votes
A Short Update on Designing for Foldable Devices

And here we are three years after I wrote about the Google Pixel Fold being announced, followed now with the announcement of the iPhone Duo...(I have questions about the naming by the way). Four years ago I was talking about web primitives in the platform for the Surface Duo. My how time flies. There are CSS media features, a Viewport Segments API, a Device Posture API but Chromium based browsers are the only ones currently supporting these things. I haven't been able to find any signal yet on whether Safari will support these things in the web platform as the developer docs focus on application development. If you're interested in trying out the platform features, you can emulate the Surface Duo and Galaxy Z Fold in the developer tools. And if you're thinking, do I really have to have my website adapt to two screens? The answer is no. Adding a design to an application or dual screen makes sense if you have an experience that has two simulataneous contexts that are useful e.g. a list of email messages/inbox on one screen, an open message, email thread or email composer on the other. Here's one of my talks from 2022 if you're interested in learning more about what's available in the browser for dual screen/foldable devices. Happy building :)

3 days ago • 1 votes
📚 BoredReading

You seem to be enjoying this.

Join free to unlock everything.

Create free account

Already have an account? Sign in