COSMIC 1.6 Desktop Environment Released with More Improvements

System76 has shipped COSMIC 1.6, the latest stable release of its open-source, Rust-based desktop environment for Linux. Landing three weeks after COSMIC 1.5, this update touches nearly every component in the COSMIC stack from the compositor to the file manager to the login screen while continuing the project’s steady march toward becoming a fully-fledged daily-driver desktop.

Headline Feature: Per-Application Volume Control

The standout addition in 1.6 is per-application audio control. Instead of managing a single system-wide volume slider, users can now set independent output levels for each running app — a feature long available on other platforms and desktop environments but missing from COSMIC until now. Supporting changes landed in the COSMIC Settings Daemon to handle playback-specific sound settings and backward-compatible audio events, and the audio applet now debounces volume updates by 128ms to prevent rapid, jittery changes while adjusting.

Compositor and Wayland Protocol Updates

The COSMIC compositor picks up two notable Wayland protocol additions:

• wl-dmabuf-v6 — enables passing direct memory buffers (dma-buf) between clients and the compositor
• EI (Emulated Input) — allows simulation of hardware input devices like keyboards and mice, laying groundwork for COSMIC’s upcoming remote desktop support

Presentation feedback can now also be taken from fullscreen surfaces, and jagged text rendering on HiDPI displays has reportedly been fixed.

Other Component Improvements

• COSMIC Files — gains a context menu for text fields and selectable text widgets, plus a fix for network shares where a failed mount could cause dialogs to hang indefinitely
• COSMIC Greeter — now detects the presence of logind at runtime, ignores empty passwords where appropriate, and adds JPEG XL and AVIF image support
• COSMIC Settings — now offers app-specific settings pages and fixes an issue where the active settings page could unload mid-search
• COSMIC Settings Daemon — no longer panics on a -1 maximum brightness value and now watches AC plug events via UPower for better power-state handling
• COSMIC Launcher — fixes flickering/closing issues triggered by the Ctrl modifier key
• COSMIC Notifications — delays creating popups until the parent size is available
• COSMIC Edit — reduces unnecessary redraws and adds context menus to input fields

The release also includes routine translation and dependency updates across the board.

Bottom Line

COSMIC 1.6 doesn’t bring a major overhaul, but it’s a solid, practical update. Per-app audio control is the kind of quality-of-life feature power users will notice immediately, and the compositor’s EI protocol support hints at real remote desktop capability on the horizon. For anyone running Pop!_OS or testing COSMIC on Fedora and other distros, this is a worthwhile update to grab.