Raspberry Pi OS October Update Fixes the Dock, Adds Battery Widgets, and Automounts Encrypted Drives

Raspberry Pi OS October Update Fixes the Dock, Adds Battery Widgets, and Automounts Encrypted Drives

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Raspberry Pi released a new Raspberry Pi OS image on October 6, three weeks after the September 15 release. It is a polish release for the desktop.

Dock and taskbar

  • Switching between the dock and the taskbar no longer resets your appearance settings
  • Changing the dock’s size or position in Control Centre now adjusts the desktop margins correctly
  • The default dock adds battery and Squeekboard (on-screen keyboard) widgets, useful on battery-powered and touchscreen setups

Other changes

  • Encrypted drives can be automounted, alongside better removable storage handling in general
  • Tooltips in Control Centre’s widget panel
  • Fixes for several crashes during Control Centre panel start-up

Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian 13 “Trixie”; a Legacy image based on Debian 12 remains available for older software.

Getting it

Existing installations get the changes with a normal update:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

For a new install, Raspberry Pi Imager fetches the latest image. Our LUKS guide covers creating an encrypted drive to take advantage of the new automount support.

More news

Raspberry Pi OS September Update Adds a Dock and a New Screenshot ToolThe September 2026 Raspberry Pi OS update brings a new dock, revamped desktop controls, a new screenshot tool, and Linux 6.18.50 LTS.openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM Moves to Linux 7.2 and Fixes Raspberry Pi Wi-FiRecent Tumbleweed ARM snapshots bring kernel 7.2.5, glibc 2.44, and QEMU 11.1.1, plus fixes for spurious Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi scan errors and a brcmfmac memory leak on long uptimes.DietPi 10.6 Adds Images for the Orange Pi 4 Pro, Orange Pi Zero 3W, and New ODROID BoardsThe minimal Debian-based distribution for single board computers expands its hardware support in the August release, covering several new Orange Pi and ODROID models.

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.Image-Based OS Updates Explained: systemd-sysupdate, A/B Partitions, and OSTreeGNOME OS, SteamOS, and Fedora Atomic update the whole operating system as one unit instead of package by package. How A/B image updates with systemd-sysupdate work, how OSTree and bootc differ, and the trade-offs compared with a package manager.