COSMIC 1.9 Adds an Image Viewer and an On-Screen Keyboard

COSMIC 1.9 Adds an Image Viewer and an On-Screen Keyboard

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COSMIC 1.9 is out, two weeks after 1.8’s touchscreen and gaming work. The headline is two new first-party apps, which fills two of the more obvious gaps left in the desktop.

COSMIC Viewer

COSMIC Viewer is an image viewer that handles the common formats and includes basic editing. Until now, COSMIC users opened images in whatever GNOME or KDE viewer their distro installed, which looked out of place. A matching viewer is unglamorous, but it is the kind of thing that makes a desktop feel finished.

COSMIC OSK

COSMIC OSK is an on-screen keyboard that accepts touch and gamepad input. Gamepad support is the interesting part: it makes COSMIC usable from a couch on a TV or handheld without a keyboard, and it continues the gaming direction of 1.8.

It is wired into the rest of the desktop too. There is a toggle to show it on the COSMIC Greeter login screen, which touchscreen users needed to type a password at all, and its settings live in COSMIC Settings.

Other changes

  • A redesigned COSMIC Store that highlights app and applet developers
  • Configurable panel border thickness
  • Font settings now sync to GNOME apps, so GTK apps stop ignoring your font choice
  • A day-of-week toggle in settings
  • COSMIC Files shows icons for .exe files, useful for Wine and Proton users
  • The compositor can show layer-shell programs on the lock screen
  • Optional systemd-homed support in the greeter, for encrypted, portable home directories

Fixes

The bug list is long and mostly the kind of thing users hit daily: context menu problems in the App Library and Launcher, pixelated icons, an unresponsive Escape key, drag-selection in Files, Wayland protocol errors, a sticking Super key, WireGuard issues, and nushell compatibility.

Looking at 2.0

System76 also sketched out COSMIC 2.0: hot reloading, widget animations, input method support through IME and fcitx (a significant gap for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean users), multi-threaded image decoding, workspace filtering, expandable folder views, Wacom tablet support, and more gaming work.

The monthly cadence since 1.0 has turned COSMIC from an interesting experiment into a desktop that is reasonable to recommend. If you want to try it without changing distro, most major distributions now package it; our desktop environments guide covers how to run a second desktop alongside your current one.

More news

COSMIC Desktop 1.8 Improves Touchscreen Support and Steam OverlaysSystem76's Rust desktop continues its monthly cadence with major touchscreen work, better mouse capture, smoother Steam overlays, and hybrid GPU fixes.COSMIC Desktop 1.6 Adds Per-Application Volume Control and Lays Groundwork for Remote DesktopSystem76's Rust desktop reaches 1.6 with per-app sound settings, wl-dmabuf-v6 and EI protocol support, and presentation feedback from fullscreen surfaces. Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS users can update now.COSMIC Desktop 1.2 Adds AVIF Support and Fixes a Nasty Archive Extraction CrashSystem76 released COSMIC Epoch 1.2.0 on June 30, 2026, the second stable update to its Rust-native, Wayland desktop environment, with AVIF image support, better newer-Intel-GPU handling, a Files app crash fix, and horizontal scrolling in the Monitor app.

Background reading

Explainers for the concepts behind this story.

Bazzite and SteamOS Explained: Linux Distros Built for GamingSteamOS runs the Steam Deck and Bazzite brings the same console-style experience to desktops and other handhelds. How both are built as immutable images, what Game Mode is, how updates and rollback work, and who should use which.Best Linux Distros for Beginners in 2026Six distributions worth recommending in 2026, ranked by how well they handle the three things that actually trip up new users: hardware support, software access, and staying out of the way.Ventoy Explained: One USB Stick for Every ISOVentoy turns a USB drive into a boot menu for any number of ISO files: copy ISOs onto it and boot whichever you need. How to install it on Linux, add ISOs, use Secure Boot and persistence, and where it does not work.