System76 released COSMIC Epoch 1.2.0 on June 30, 2026, the second stable point update since COSMIC’s 1.0 debut as the default desktop in Pop!_OS. COSMIC is built from scratch in Rust on the Iced graphics toolkit, is Wayland-native with no X11 fallback, and ships its own first-party applications for files, settings, the app store, terminal, and system monitoring rather than adopting existing GNOME or KDE components.

Files App: Archive Crash Fixed, Checksums Added

The COSMIC Files app receives the most user-visible fixes in this release. Extracting certain archive payloads previously crashed the app outright; that crash is now fixed. The properties panel also gains file checksums, useful for verifying downloads without dropping to a terminal, and Files now lets users view a folder’s contents while that folder sits in Trash, rather than requiring a restore first just to see what’s inside.

AVIF Image Support

COSMIC 1.2 adds native AVIF image format support across its image-viewing components. AVIF has been gaining ground as a smaller, higher-quality alternative to JPEG for photos and web images, and lack of native support was one of the more commonly requested gaps in COSMIC’s first year.

Better Support for Newer Intel GPUs

Graphics handling improves for newer Intel integrated and discrete GPUs, reducing rough edges that early adopters on recent Intel hardware had been hitting since COSMIC’s initial stable release.

Store and Monitor Improvements

• COSMIC Store: the package manager app now shows an animated loading indicator instead of an ambiguous blank state while fetching results
• COSMIC Monitor: the Applications and Processes pages, introduced in COSMIC 1.1, now support horizontal scrolling, making it easier to see all columns of data on narrower displays without resizing the window

Where COSMIC Is Headed

System76 has laid out a longer-term roadmap organized into development “Epochs,” each spanning roughly six to eight months. The next major phases are expected to focus on foundational work, including rebasing core UI libraries and reducing CPU and memory overhead, followed later by gaming-oriented work such as improved Vulkan support and HDR. COSMIC ships on a rolling basis outside of these numbered point releases, so incremental fixes and smaller features land on a weekly cadence between the named versions.

Getting COSMIC 1.2

Pop!_OS users on the COSMIC desktop will receive 1.2.0 through their normal system update channel. Other distributions that package COSMIC separately, including Fedora’s COSMIC spin, will pick it up on their own packaging schedules, which can lag the upstream System76 release by anywhere from days to a few weeks depending on how each distribution handles COSMIC packaging.