Sonata 0.23.0-alpha

Sonata 0.23.0-alpha

Sonata is Rust only now. The whole desktop and every app is the Rust build, installed as sonata2:

• Dock, Launchpad, the menu bar and Control Center;
• notifications, Mission Control, Files and the apps.

"Sonata" on the login screen is the Rust desktop. Updating from the Python Sonata keeps your settings, apps' data, keys, layouts, web apps and saved passwords. The old install is moved to ~/.local/share/sonata2-backups. Rust (cargo) is needed to install and update.

Highlights

• Notification Center: macOS-style glass, and each app's notifications stacked into a group that opens on click. The calendar stays at the top while the notifications scroll.
• About This Computer in the Big Sur style, with tabs. Storage uses the same meter as Disk Manager.
• Dock folders open in place:
  • The panel is drawn in the Dock itself.
  • Drag an app out to put it on the Dock, where its place opens.
  • Esc or a click elsewhere closes the panel.
• Now Playing:
  • A player without artwork (Chrome playing Netflix) shows its app's icon.
  • The menu bar's Now Playing has a volume slider.
• Apps: folders have Ungroup, and a right-click on an app inside a folder shows its menu.
• Uninstall… in an app's menu on the Dock and in Apps.
• AppImages: Install from their right-click menu.
• Settings' search finds every setting, not only the sections.

Fixes (some of them)

• Menu bar:
  • It keeps the app in front's name and menus while you use them, and their items act on that app. With Chrome in front, they used to turn into Files'.
  • Wi-Fi, Search and Control Center no longer turn dark after minimizing or switching windows.
• Web apps keep their window's size again.
• Settings > Displays shows the displays again.
• Search closes with a click beside it or on its icon.
• Menus, popups, Control Center and the Game Bar open at once.
• Notification Center no longer lags with many notifications.
• Screenshots work while Mission Control is open.
• Empty Trash no longer fails with a folder in the Trash.

The full list is in CHANGELOG.md.

Sonata 0.22.0-alpha

New

• Settings > Mouse & Trackpad > Pointer: choose any pointer theme installed on the computer, add one from a downloaded file (.tar.gz, .tar.xz, .zip) or a folder, set its size (up to 64 px), and go back to Sonata's pointer with Restore Defaults. Apps that read the pointer only when they start pick it up at the next login.
• Settings > Appearance > Button order: drag the close, minimize and zoom buttons into the order you like (Use Default puts back close, minimize, zoom). Every window follows at once -- Sonata's own, the title bars drawn for other apps, GTK and libadwaita apps and Steam -- mirrored when the buttons are on the right.

Fixes

• Files and the Desktop: the shortcut arrow no longer shows on apps installed with Flatpak, Nix, Snap and others (their entries are links only because of how they were installed), nor on other links in system or hidden folders. Shortcuts made with Create Shortcut -- in your folders, on the Desktop or on a plugged-in disk -- keep it.
• Alt+Tab: every app keeps the same tile size when selected. A long app name or window title no longer widens its tile; the name under the icon fits the icon's width and ends in an ellipsis when longer."

Sonata 0.21.0-alpha

Sonata 0.21.0-alpha

This release brings a Game Bar for playing on Sonata, lockable folders, a faster screenshot flow and a lot of polish to app folders.

Highlights

Game Bar (Super+G, or the Xbox / PS button)

• A bar over the dimmed game, in glass made from a single blurred picture of the game, so it costs nothing per frame. It shows the app in front, a toggle for each widget and the clock.
• Audio: output and microphone volumes, a per-app volume mixer, and what recordings take: System, Microphone, Both or None. Both records a mixed default track plus each source on its own track.
• Capture: screenshots, recording with a timer, and instant replay, which saves the last 30 seconds with Save Last 30 s or Super+Alt+G.
• Performance: FPS Limit and every Control Center graph (CPU, GPUs, memory, temperatures, network). Pin it to keep it on screen as a HUD.
• Now Playing and Control Center widgets: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode, Do Not Disturb and brightness.
• Move widgets by their title (double-click to put one back) and pin them over the game. Steam games show their real name and icon.
• Full controller navigation: D-pad / stick to move, A to press, B to close, LB / RB to jump.
• The recording pill's pen lets you draw on the game's display.

Lock Folder

• In Files: encrypts a folder with gocryptfs, using your login password as the key. Locked folders close when the screen locks or the session ends. Unlock Folder… decrypts it for good.
• In Apps, the Apps Menu and the Dock: folders can ask for your password before they open.

Screenshots

• Print Screen captures right away and opens the shot in Markup, using the toolbar's last mode, folder and clipboard choice.
• The capture toolbar stays open for more shots until you close it.

Apps & folders

• Drag apps out of folders in Apps, the Apps Menu and the Dock. They land beside the app you drop them on, and a bar shows where.
• Dropping an app on another makes a folder again in the Apps Menu.
• Open folders are glass, with the apps behind them faded and blurred. They follow Hide and Lock App right away.

Everything else

• Reopen your apps after Restart, Shut Down or Log Out (on by default).
• Window buttons are easier to hit, with bigger click targets up to the window's corner, on Sonata windows and other apps' title bars.
• Videos: Trim and Crop buttons in the controls, and the right-click menu is back.
• Preview, Terminal, TextEdit, Disk Manager, Calendar and Videos have a minimum window size.
• Alerts drop the close dot where a button already backs out.
• tools/apply-update.sh applies an update without the usual failures.

Fixes

• Screenshots to the clipboard work again from every caller.
• The drawing palette no longer has a square shadow.
• After an update, the blur rule is refreshed when the menu bar starts.
• Dock, Dock folders and Launchpad tests always run now, using a fixed set of test apps.

Full list in CHANGELOG.md.

Sonata 0.20.5-alpha

Minor bug fixes

Sonata 0.20.4-alpha

Minor bug fixes

Sonata 0.20.3-alpha

Minor bug fixes

Sonata 0.20.2-alpha

Sonata 0.20.2-alpha

This release rounds out the 0.20 series: video wallpapers that behave like a real desktop, window buttons you can resize, and a batch of fixes.

Highlights

Video wallpapers, done properly

• Smooth loop: the last frame fades into the first instead of cutting or going black.
• Per-display playback: a display with no windows keeps playing while one with windows shows it paused (Settings › Wallpaper › Pause each display on its own, on by default).
• New option Keep playing with windows open (off by default). Overview and the lock screen still pause it.
• Optional sound with its own volume (off by default, 25%).
• The video now plays, blurred, on the lock and login screens.
• Overview's desktop thumbnail shows the frame the video paused on.
• Paused while dragging a window and in Overview (Super+Tab).

Window buttons

• New Button size slider in Appearance › Title Bars. It applies to Sonata's apps, GTK apps, the title bars Sonata draws for other apps, and Steam.
• Buttons move inward as the window corner gets rounder. On the right side they now sit exactly as on the left, including in WhatsApp, VS Code and other Electron apps.

Dock & Files

• Drag folders from Files (the list or the sidebar) onto the Dock to keep them as stacks. A gap opens beside your other folders to show where it will land.
• Dock folders use the folder icon by default.
• The Dock's end icons keep their distance from rounder corners.

Everything else

• New colour-wheel picker with a brightness slider.
• Game controllers: hold LB + RB + L3 + R3 to toggle desktop control.
• Changing the system language now updates date and number formats too.

Fixes

• Changing the wallpaper after a video sometimes stopped working until Sonata restarted.
• Video wallpaper went black after its end, or with sound turned on.
• Lock screen, login screen and Overview thumbnails were black with videos that fade in.
• Login screen video stayed paused after a reboot. The desktop's could stay paused after closing the last window.
• Settings › Wallpaper › Choose… did nothing; it now opens Sonata's own picker for pictures and videos.
• The Downloads stack panel stretched across the screen with long file names.
• The close button was clipped on right-side title bars.

Sonata 0.19.4-alpha

General bug fixes

Sonata 0.19.3-alpha

Mission Control grows up: right-click a window for its Dock menu, drag it onto another desktop, close it from its corner, click the empty space to leave; desktops animate in and out. The Dock's window previews show the windows, WhatsApp's window shows its name, and Sonata is lighter: the Control Center opens at once, with its sliders already where they are.

Highlights

Mission Control

• Right-click a window for its app's Dock menu: its windows, Options, Minimize, Quit.
• Drag a window onto a desktop in the bar at the top to move it there.
• Close button (×) on the window under the pointer.
• Click where no window is to leave, back to the window you were using.
• Desktops grow in when added and shrink away when closed; the others glide into place.
• Clicking a window brings it forward, every time (only minimized windows did).
• Super+Tab closes Launchpad and the Apps menu.
• A window's right-click menu closes with Mission Control.

Your side for close buttons

• The small × on Mission Control's windows and desktops and on the Dock's previews sits on the side of your window buttons (Settings > Appearance).

Dock previews

• They show the windows themselves. On some GPUs the pictures came back empty; Sonata's Wayfire plugin now has the renderer draw and read them.
• They appear after 1 s on the icon, for a single window too, and come back after you pick a window from them.

Fixes

• WhatsApp (and any web app whose page gives Chrome no title) is titled with its name, not "web.whatsapp.com". Once the page sets a title, such as "(3) WhatsApp", that one shows.
• Notification badges in the Dock come back after the menu bar restarts. Before, they waited for a new notification.
• Control Center:
  • It opens at once, with the sound and brightness sliders already at their levels. They no longer jump after it opens.
  • Its opening animation is back.
  • It no longer sets volume and brightness again on every opening, which took seconds with DDC/CI monitors.
• Full-screen videos no longer come back from Mission Control with blue in the corners.
• No blur behind Mission Control and the wallpaper.

Lighter

• sonata2 keep, which supervises the polkit agent all session long, used to wake 20 times a second. Now it sleeps until it's needed.
• Every playing sound stream no longer re-reads the volume.
• The menu bar's icons are redrawn only when the front app or the windows change.
• The Downloads stack isn't re-listed while a download is being written.
• Mission Control's desktops bar is rebuilt once per burst of window events.
• Dock settings changes no longer re-read the appearance in every Sonata process.
• The Dock's previews never take screen pictures where Sonata's plugin draws them.

Installing and updating

git pull
./install.sh

Then log out and back in. install.sh rebuilds Wayfire and Sonata's plugin by itself, because this release changes both: three new Wayfire patches, plus the window pictures and full-screen corners in Sonata's plugin.

Sonata 0.19.2-alpha

Quicker to open and smoother to use: the Apps menu opens at once, the Control Center's first opening is as fast as the rest, translucent windows no longer flicker, and Mission Control's windows drag at once, including onto + for a new desktop.

Faster

• Apps menu (Launchpad):
  • Opens at once from the Dock.
  • Opens in about 0.1 s from Super or F4.
  • Before, every opening started a whole Sonata process (~0.5 s) just to tell the one already running.
• Control Center: its first opening after login is as quick as the others, because it's built once, unseen, a few seconds after login.

Mission Control

• A window follows the pointer as soon as you drag it. Before, it stayed in place until pulled about 200 px.
• Drop a window on + for a new desktop with the window on it.

Fixes

• Translucent windows (Terminal and Sonata's other apps) no longer flicker where they redraw a little, such as a blinking cursor, and no longer show a faint square around the pointer. The blur of a small part is now computed on the same grid as the whole screen's.

Installing and updating

git pull
./install.sh

Then log out and back in. install.sh rebuilds Wayfire by itself, because this release changes its patches (the blur and Mission Control's dragging).

Full changelog: CHANGELOG.md