The COSMIC desktop environment has already made a strong impression and attracted a growing following. Still, there’s no denying that many things need to be fixed or added before it truly feels complete and polished.
And even though version 1 has officially been declared stable (the current release is 1.0.3), many users feel it doesn’t quite live up to that label yet. The good news is that System76 is taking a rolling update approach, delivering smaller, incremental improvements rather than waiting for major releases.
And recently, something genuinely exciting was revealed, an upcoming addition that’s set to be added to the desktop environment.
In a post on X, Carl Richell, CEO of System76, has shared early work-in-progress visuals of frosted-glass effects being explored for the COSMIC desktop environment. Later, early previews also appeared on Reddit. Just look at this beauty.
As you can see in the image above, the window backgrounds remain partially transparent, blurring the content behind them and allowing the desktop wallpaper or other windows to show through softly without affecting readability. And I can’t help but agree that it looks great.
In the same thread, Richell also addressed feedback related to desktop behavior and animations, confirming that additional desktop animations are planned. Which is welcome, because, if we’re being honest, animations are almost completely absent currently from the COSMIC desktop environment.
Finally, Richell also confirmed that an issue where Bluetooth automatically re-enabled after system restarts has been fixed.
And now for the question everyone is probably asking: when will these features arrive in COSMIC? For now, System76 hasn’t committed to any specific timeline or release. That said, since active development is already underway, it’s reasonable to expect they’ll start showing up within the next few months.
- Design
