Cosmic Desktop Alpha 2: BIG PROGRESS for a month of work!
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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:29 Sponsor: Proton VPN
01:57 Visuals and settings
08:03 File manager
12:14 Misc. changes
13:26 Parting Thoughts
COSMIC’s Alpha 2 release builds upon the first alpha with functionality built for Files, additional Settings pages, considerable infrastructure work for screen reader support+, and some highly requested window management features.
Power & Battery:
Here you can choose between an Extended battery life mode, High performance mode, and Balanced mode. You can also check the battery levels of your mouse, keyboard, headset, or other wireless devices.
Sound Settings:
Select input and output devices, adjust volume for each on a slider, and choose between a variety of sound profiles. Additionally, Bluetooth (bluez5) devices are now supported.
Network & Wireless:
Check Wired connections, choose from Wifi options in range, and manage your VPN connection from Network & Wireless Settings.
Displays:
New X11 Window Application Scaling options in Displays Settings allows you to enable sharper X11 apps, as well as gaming at native display resolution.
New Window Management Features:
Two highly requested features have been built into Window Management Settings: Focus follows cursor, and Cursor follows focus.
In Alpha 2, users can now disable the Super key from the dropdown in Window Management settings.
New Interface Density Settings:
Comfortable, Compact, and Spacious Interface Density settings adjust the spacing between elements throughout the COSMIC desktop. The size of headers, space between lists such as file names or setting options, space between applets and inside applets adjust according to the setting preference.
This feature was merged early to identify widgets and spacing that require adjustment. You may encounter unexpected spacing using the Compact and Spacious options.
COSMIC Files:
● Search bar, New Folder, Grid/List view, and Sort by options added to header
● Sort by Name, Type, Last modified, Date created, and Size (Last modified selected by default)
● ”Recents” added to the sidebar for viewing recent files
● Preview files in a context menu before opening
● Gallery is a new feature accessible from the Preview. In gallery mode, users can cycle through images in a folder.
● Compress/Extract files from right-click menu, as well as Extract To a desired location. support for .tar, .tbz, .tgz, .txz, and .zip. Support for password encoded zip files will be next.
● Browse and connect to network drives
● Ctrl+D shortcut adds the selected item to the sidebar.
● ”File” menu is now complete. Includes options to open a new tab, window, or folder; open a file or open with preferred application; rename, show details, add to sidebar, move to trash, close tab, or quit.
● Ctrl+, shortcut opens Files app settings
● Defaults to floating when opened by xdg-portal (when uploading/downloading on
another app)
● Separators in sidebar to divide Trash, Networks, and additional drives
Release & Schedule Changes:
The second COSMIC alpha will be released on September 26th. Those participating in Alpha 1 on Pop!_OS can simply update through the COSMIC App Store to transition. This alpha will be followed by monthly alpha releases until all core features have been built out.