Endless OS 7 is under heavy development, and these release notes are a very, very early draft. Congratulations for finding them! Just note that information here may be incomplete or inaccurate.
¶ User Experience
Endless OS 7 continues to evolve the desktop experience based on user testing while continuing to be the app-centric operating system you’ve come to know and love.
¶ App grid
The app grid remains the focal point of Endless OS, showing when you first log in, close all your windows, or switch to a new workspace. From the app grid you can select an app to open or just start typing to search for apps as well as encyclopedia content, settings, and more.
Endless OS 7 adds a blur behind the app grid to ensure app names remain legible no matter your wallpaper. Workspaces are also now visible above the app grid, making it faster to jump between tasks when multitasking.
¶ Top Bar
The top bar features a new dynamic Activities button at the start, replacing the previous "Activities" and "Applications" labels. This new button acts as a workspace indicator, always showing how many workspaces are open and which one is focused. When an app window is open, selecting the Activities button returns you to the app grid.
¶ Notifications
Notifications have been greatly improved in Endless OS 7. Each notification now shows which app it's from, and notifications from the same app are automatically grouped in a stack together to keep the list organized and easier to navigate. Individual notifications can be expanded to read more details and perform actions straight from the list—not just the initial pop-up.
¶ Quick Settings
The Quick Settings system menu at the end of the top bar has been improved in Endless OS 7. Each toggle now contains a status line to provide more information and a more consistent design, and the menu can be opened with ⌘+S (where ⌘ is the Windows, Super, or Command key depending on your keyboard).
The Bluetooth toggle now contains a menu to quickly see paired and connected devices. Selecting a device in this menu will toggle its connection.
The new keyboard backlight toggle (on supported devices) enables toggling your laptop keyboard's backlighting. If the keyboard supports multiple brightness levels, the menu expands to enable more fine-grained control.
The new Background Apps section at the bottom of the Quick Settings menu shows apps that are running in the background without an open window. Each app can be opened by selecting it, or closed with the × button.
¶ Dash
The bottom Dash that shows favorite and opened apps has been refreshed. It now displays notification count badges for your apps. To clear the badge, clear the app's notifications in the top bar menu.
¶ Apps
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Files app
- Cleaner, improved design
- Search everywhere
- Open/Save dialogs
- Faster
-
Console
- Replaces Terminal
- Modern design with light/dark style support
- Upstream
¶ …and more
- Accent colors
- Digital Wellbeing
- Settings
- Improved design with more descriptive labels, faster navigation, and more consistent patterns
- Improved Sound, Online Accounts, System sections
- Mouse & Touchpad
- Much more visual and descriptive settings
- Secondary click (right-click) settings for touchpad
- Disable Touchpad While Typing
- Wi-Fi: share a Wi-Fi network/password using a QR code
- Accessibility
- "Scrollbars always visible" toggle
- Improved, more consistent High Contrast mode
- Toggle on/off symbols in switches
- Improved screen reader support
- Activate windows on hover
- Fonts
¶ Under the Hood
Endless OS 7 is a major technical rearchitecting of Endless OS. Earlier versions of Endless OS were built from Debian, but Endless OS 7 is now based on GNOME OS while continuing to use OSTree + Flatpak to manage the base system and apps.
This rearchitecture was made to enable a faster, lower maintenance development cycle while sticking closer to upstream GNOME development. The intended result is a similar desktop experience to Endless OS 6 but with more frequent improvements from the GNOME project going forward.
Along with this rearchitecting, the monolithic "Endless Desktop" GNOME Shell extension has been replaced by a small number of community-maintained extensions to achieve similar experience:
-
Auto Activities: opens the app grid when closing all windows/switching to a new workspace
-
Dash to Dock: makes the Dash always visible and auto-hiding like a dock
-
Start Overlay in Application View: makes the Super key and Activities button open the app grid instead of the workspaces overview
-
Overview Background: puts the wallpaper behind the app grid
-
Just Perfection: hides extraneous workspace switchers
¶ Software Versions
- Linux
- GNOME 48, bringing five releases worth of improvements