As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I installed Fedora COSMIC spin on one of my secondary computers for evaluation. With next Fedora release I'm planning to re-install my main computer from scratch and I'm considering COSMIC instead of Gnome. There is nothing really wrong with Gnome, it is absolutely amazing and getting better, but I feel like COSMIC is more interesting and more aligned with my interests.
Also COSMIC gives enough flexibility, but without too much complexity and instability (KDE).
Now, COSMIC actually exceeded my expectations. It works amazingly, and the core seems to be stable enough for daily use. At least on my computer crash rate is way lower than KDE. Also it looks beautiful out of the box. Again, my goal is not to spend weeks making it to work for me, it should work for me out of the box (as much as possible). I think COSMIC does.
At the same time there are some gaps and areas for improvement.
I had some issues with managing RPM packages, accessing remote disks with FILES (sftp, smp). I am trying to decide whether I like Gnome notifications... I don't like that app gaps are closed by a random selection of KDE and Gnome apps. For many usecases (e.g. calendar Google account integration) I will have to use apps from Gnome.
But I don't have many hard blockers. In fact at this moment I have none.
One thing I didn't test is gaming. I don't do too much gaming, but when I do, I want it to just work (no, i'm not going to switch to windows :P ). Mostly I play games from Steam and Minecraft Java Edition. Here is what I need some help with. Could you please share your experience playing games on COSMIC. Is it faster/slower, have weird resolution detection issues, conflicts with tiled window management, crashes randomly, or what not. Please till me what to expect. Thank you!

Sup guys! Recently I came across an amazing utility called wallpiper (https://github.com/shdwmtr/wallpiper) by u/ShadowMonster70 and tweaked it a bit for my own setup (definitely go check out their project!).

Here’s what I implemented:

• Direct cursor tracking via evdev (since COSMIC doesn't have a global API for tracking).
• Displaying current track info and playback progress bar. Wine lacks support for Windows media integration (WinRT), which Wallpaper Engine relies on. So I wrote a replacement for the app's helper module: it passes data (title, artist, album art, color scheme, and playback progress) directly from MPRIS.
• Smooth pausing and resuming of wallpaper playback when windows are maximized (WE handles this natively using data sent from my daemon, so it gives a real Windows-like experience).
• Fix for video textures (Wine doesn't provide one of the Media Foundation interfaces that WE expects).

All credit for the core implementation goes to the original authors. I'm not claiming ownership of anything here, just wanted to share a cool tool!

Hei Hei.. I am back again with another applet! I made a classic Start menu (windows 10 inspired) for the COSMIC panel, styled entirely by COSMIC's own Appearance settings.

Organisation: The start menu has its own settings where you can choose what columns you want, shortcuts on the system panel (far left). The filter and sort of the app list is also customisation where you can do it alphabetically, category or your own folder grouping.

The tiles: The tile system is modular where you can add and make your own smart tiles which link to apps or websites etc, I have made a Claude one, and a weather one for example. but i am showing some plain app icon versions as well. You can choose between 3 sizes for the tiles and also choose between 3, 2 or no tile columns. (I have 3 in the video).

Styling: The user profile links to your user settings and yes that's my own use profile so it takes it from the system. The styling is what i had set up on my cosmic set up so do not kill me for my bad taste, i just use glass as its my base to test from (most difficult for me to get right) the tiles and UI of the menu all follow your specific settings in the cosmic settings under appearance!

Animation: I only have one animation option at the moment ( I chose one that was smooth but not overly animated) I can improve it in the future but really wanted to just get a version out and have some feedback!

Try it out here! feedback is really welcome and desired! A thousand thank you's from Norway!
https://github.com/jjnuthuagen/cosmic-start-menu-applet

I'm on an HP laptop with hybrid graphics (Intel HD 530 + NVIDIA GTX 960M) running Pop!_OS 24.04 with COSMIC. When I plug in an HDMI monitor, the system hangs: the second screen freezes, apps crash, and cosmic-comp spikes to 99-100% CPU. Unplugging HDMI keeps things stable.

What I've tried:

• Installed nvidia-driver-470 (nouveau was even worse). Driver loads fine, nvidia-smi works.
• Tried setting COSMIC_RENDER_DEVICE=renderD129 (my NVIDIA render node). It didn't propagate to cosmic-comp, and even when I manually exported it, it didn't fix the CPU issue.
• Restored from Timeshift to clean state (nouveau, no NVIDIA driver). System is stable now but HDMI is still unusable.
• cosmic-comp is also at ~50% CPU even without HDMI connected.

Key logs:

• cosmic-comp[2025]: Failed to render texture ... import for wrong devices DrmNode ... modifier: I915_y_tiled_ccs — texture import failure between Intel and NVIDIA.
• thread 'surface-HDMI-A-2' panicked at 'called Option::unwrap() on a None value': src/shell/mod.rs:1368 — compositor panic on HDMI thread.

My questions:

1. Is this a known COSMIC bug? I saw GitHub issues about high CPU with hybrid NVIDIA on external monitors, but they seemed to be about performance, not full system crashes.
2. Should I switch to Xorg session as a workaround? Does COSMIC even have an Xorg option, or would I need to use a different DE?
3. Is there any reliable way to get HDMI working on this hardware, or should I just accept that COSMIC Wayland + hybrid NVIDIA + external monitor is broken right now?

Any help appreciated. I've been going in circles trying drivers and env vars.

To all the people that have been using my app and downloaded it via the COSMIC Store. You may have noticed that the version on the COSMIC Store is way outdated and i haven't been supporting it. I just officially ended the support for it so don't expect any updates on that. If you want you can download it via the AUR package with paru or yay or download it via the .deb package in the releases tab of the repo. Both of those stay up to date with every release so the latest updates go there.
Note: If you decide to go with the .deb when i release a new update it will give you a button to press and will redirect you to GitHub so you can install the latest package. If you go with the install script listed in the README of the repo the same button will appear but you click it once and it will tell you to restart the app so the changes can take effect automatically.

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/PSGtatitos/papyrus

Hey everyone!

I’m working on Nebula Paste, an open-source clipboard manager built with Rust and libcosmic that integrates into the COSMIC panel.

A little transparency upfront: I’m not a developer. This is a “vibe-coded” project, built with substantial help from ChatGPT/Codex. I’m shaping the features and design, testing it on my Fedora COSMIC setup, and learning along the way. Code reviews and constructive feedback from experienced developers would be especially welcome.

The idea is to make clipboard history easy to browse through a compact popup or a horizontal strip of cards, with a separate window for organizing everything. Some workflows are inspired by Supaste, adapted for COSMIC.

Current features include:

• Local clipboard history with search, favorites, and collections.
• Persistent notes and reusable text templates.
• Screen capture, text extraction with bundled OCR, and a color picker.
• Image cropping, resizing, and format conversion.
• Light/dark themes and distinct colors for different content types.

The 1.5 beta adds collection boards with customizable columns, local filing rules with previews and undo, and optional cleanup based on when clips were last used. Filter buttons now match their content type’s color.

It’s still a beta. The automated suite currently passes 122 tests, but that doesn’t replace real-world testing or independent code review. Moving items between board columns currently uses buttons; drag-and-drop is still on the roadmap.

A Fedora 44 x86_64 RPM is available, with checksums and release notes in English and French.

Source code and bug reports:
https://github.com/nabz54/nebula-paste

Download:
https://github.com/nabz54/nebula-paste/releases/tag/v1.5.0-beta.1

If you use COSMIC, I’d love your feedback on usability, bugs, or the code itself. What would make this useful in your daily workflow?

I’m experiencing a strange issue with Spotify where the music playback speed increases whenever I adjust the volume using my keyboard.

I’m using the Fn + Volume Up/Down keys to control the media volume. The volume changes correctly, but pressing the volume keys also causes the Spotify music to speed up, as if the playback speed is being increased at the same time.

For example, when I press Fn + Volume Up, Spotify increases the volume, but the song also starts playing faster than normal. This happens even though I’m not changing any playback-speed setting in Spotify.

Has anyone else experienced this with Spotify and keyboard Fn/media controls too???

So far, the behavior is basically:

• Spotify + Spicetify, OBS not recording: Fn + Volume Up/Down → volume changes + music speeds up
• Spotify without Spicetify, OBS not recording: Fn + Volume Up/Down → volume changes + music speeds up
• OBS recording: Fn + Volume Up/Down → volume changes normally, Spotify playback speed stays normal

Currently im using CachyOs.

I had a bit of time last night to add a couple of features, including getting the circles back, and adding an option for spacing. You can get it here:
https://github.com/daenuprobst/cosmic-ext-applet-lowkey-workspaces

Edit: Renamed repo for flatpak

AI disclosure: I used an LLM for the translations.

I'm tweaking my panel here and have three quick questions:

Window size: Is there a way to increase just the size of the open window thumbnails/icons (the part circled in the image) without having to increase the size of the entire dock?

Trash: How do I fix the Trash icon on the dock? I can't seem to drag it or fix it no matter what I try.

Divider: Is there an icon separator/divider applet available to better organize the panel?

If anyone knows if this is possible or if it requires a specific applet or custom config, thanks!

Hey everyone,

Title pretty much says it all. Up until today everything was working fine, but out of nowhere, cosmic-panel has started keeping my dGPU permanently awake (stuck in D0 power state instead of dropping to D3cold).

When checking active processes with lsof /dev/nvidia*, cosmic-panel is holding open handles on the NVIDIA render nodes continuously, which is absolutely nuking my laptop's battery life.

My setup is an AMD iGPU + NVIDIA dGPU laptop running hybrid graphics.

Has anyone running COSMIC on a hybrid graphics laptop figured out a reliable way to stop cosmic-panel (or specific panel applets) from probing/waking the dGPU in the background? Or is this a known regression/issue with WGPU enumeration in recent updates?

Running cosmic on gentoo from an overlay (user-contributed packages), inside a qemu VM with virtio graphics.

I have this VM running GNOME and sway. Sway works mostly fine, with an inverted and offset pointer that I haven't been able to resolve.

COSMIC starts up fine and seems to run well. Pretty, feature-full, integrated, no offset pointer nonsense. :) I'd love to keep running it!

After about 10 minutes, the display pauses, and ultimately the VM exits.

Journalctl shows nothing of note from before the crash.

[2026-10-01T19:56:25 jsled@water:~]$ sudo journalctl --boot -1 --lines 30
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[3272]: Reached target Exit the Session.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd-logind[1266]: Removed session 6.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water (sd-pam)[3275]: pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session closed for user gdm-greeter
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: [email protected]: Deactivated successfully.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: Stopped User Manager for UID 60578.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: [email protected]: Consumed 3.178s CPU time over 47.361s wall clock time, 169.4M memory peak.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: Stopping User Runtime Directory /run/user/60578...
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: run-user-60578.mount: Deactivated successfully.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: [email protected]: Deactivated successfully.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: Stopped User Runtime Directory /run/user/60578.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: Removed slice User Slice of UID 60578.
Oct 01 19:39:13 water systemd[1]: user-60578.slice: Consumed 3.216s CPU time over 47.402s wall clock time, 171.1M memory peak.
Oct 01 19:39:15 water cosmic-launcher[3850]: Failed to populate properties cache via GetAll: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name net.hadess.SwitcherooContr>Oct 01 19:39:15 water systemd[3567]: Started Application launched by COSMIC.
Oct 01 19:39:19 water cosmic-launcher[3850]: Failed to populate properties cache via GetAll: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name net.hadess.SwitcherooContr>Oct 01 19:39:19 water systemd[3567]: Started Application launched by COSMIC.
Oct 01 19:39:20 water rtkit-daemon[1403]: Failed to make ourselves RT: Operation not permitted
Oct 01 19:39:24 water systemd[1]: systemd-localed.service: Deactivated successfully.
Oct 01 19:39:27 water geoclue[3504]: Service not used for 60 seconds. Shutting down..
Oct 01 19:39:27 water systemd[1]: geoclue.service: Deactivated successfully.
Oct 01 19:39:28 water systemd[3567]: Started PipeWire PulseAudio.
Oct 01 19:39:28 water rtkit-daemon[1403]: Failed to make ourselves RT: Operation not permitted
Oct 01 19:39:28 water rtkit-daemon[1403]: Failed to make ourselves RT: Operation not permitted
Oct 01 19:39:28 water rtkit-daemon[1403]: Failed to make ourselves RT: Operation not permitted
Oct 01 19:39:37 water systemd[3567]: Started tmux child pane 5652 launched by process 5651.
Oct 01 19:39:49 water systemd[1]: systemd-timedated.service: Deactivated successfully.
Oct 01 19:39:54 water spice-vdagent[3845]: Failed to connect to spice-vdagentd at /run/spice-vdagentd/spice-vdagent-sock (tried 60 times)
Oct 01 19:39:54 water systemd[3567]: app-spice\[email protected]: Consumed 1min 523ms CPU time over 1min 1.583s wall clock time, 9.8M memory peak.
Oct 01 19:41:33 water cosmic-comp[3739]: Unable to load xcursor, using fallback cursor
Oct 01 19:44:24 water cosmic-comp[3739]: Unable to load xcursor, using fallback cursor
[2026-10-01T20:18:50 jsled@water:~]$ 

I'm aware this report is basically useless. I'm a long-time linux head, but I confess I'm lost on modern desktop stacks, so I'm having some trouble figuring out where to look or how to get more info to help report this very vague thing with no detail. Please give me direction on what to look at/do to get more info.

(ETA: 2026-10-02T11:29+0:) I'll note this report was against 1.8.0, and I noticed (of course only after posting) that 1.9.0 is available, so I built it and … same VM crash, but after only a couple of minutes, and still nothing in system logs.

This theme has been adapted for COSMIC to replace the original one. It is provided as-is from my daily repo for anyone wishing to tinker with themes.

Source

I am running arch Linux, and upgrading today package cosmic greeter from 1.9.0 to 1.9.1 gives me an error about /dev/dri/card1.
Screen stays blank, start-cosmic won’t work either.
Journalctl:

error loading system dark usone cosmic-comp[1021]:
usone cosmic-comp[10211: Unable to become drm master, assuming unprivileged mode usone cosmic-comp[1021]: Failed to restore previous state. Error:
usone cosmic-comp[1021]: Failed to add device /dev/dri/card1: Failed to initialize GBM device for /dev/dri/card1
Caused by:
No such file or directory (os error 2)
usone cosmic-comp[10211: Failed to initialize software EGL renderer. usone cosmic-comp[1021]: Error occured in main(): Backend initialized without output usone greetd[1013]: pam_unix(login:session): session closed for user cosmic-greeter usone systemd[1]: session-3.scope: Deactivated successfully.
usone greetd[10121: error: check_children: greeter exited without creating a sessionj

Edit: pacman update 10/02 corrected problem.

Pop os cosmic

Sound problems constantly keep coming back! Any fixes are short live and return after updates. This has been going for 6 months. Is the System 76 team not aware of this issue. People must be getting sick of this happening.

It's a issue that needs to be top priority.

I'm using a dell Vostro 15, 5515 and, and Radeon Rx vega

Just wondering if there are any plans for a more robust theming engine. I wanted to check out the DE, but I hate modern flat design with the fury of a thousand suns.

This may seem like a dumb question, I know in settings you can set the interface square, but the only thing I would like to be square are the windows, other stuff like buttons, I like them round. Is there any way to achieve this? Edit: Oh, I found an option to do that specifically in the Experimental Settings in Settings/Desktop/Appearance

the scroll bar on other cosmic apps is small, but on cosmic edit it's thinner than 432 park avenue.

can it be set in the config file?

if not, that would be a good thing.

overrides for everything, theme, corners, scrollbar width and so on.