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

Sonata 0.18.0-alpha

Mission Control with desktops on Super+Tab, videos as wallpapers, Switch User on the lock screen, every window of an app in the Dock and in Alt+Tab, Sonata in Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), and Electron apps that resize.

Highlights

Mission Control and desktops

• Super+Tab opens Mission Control, like Windows' Task View. Ctrl+Up, F3 and a three-finger swipe up still work.
• A Spaces bar at the top shows the desktops' names, as in macOS Ventura, with the current desktop in a glass pill.
  • Point at the bar and each desktop's picture slides in, with its wallpaper and the icons of its apps.
  • + adds a desktop.
  • × closes one, and its windows move to the desktop before it.
• Alt+Tab stays the app switcher. An app with several windows now shows one icon per window.

Every window of an app

• Dock: pointing at a running app shows a live preview of every window it has open. That includes windows that are covered, minimized or on another desktop. Click one to bring it forward.

Videos as wallpapers

• Choose a video in Settings > Wallpaper, or right-click a video and pick Use Video as Wallpaper.
• It plays looped and silent, and only while the desktop is in front.
  • Any app in front pauses it, and it stops decoding meanwhile.
  • The lock screen and a dark display pause it too.
• One decoder serves every display that shows it.
• The lock and login screens blur a frame of the video.

Switch User

• When the computer has another user, the lock screen offers Switch User. Your session stays locked behind it.
• A user who is already logged in goes straight back to their own session.
• Anyone else gets the login screen on a free console.

Sonata in Portuguese

• Sonata is now in Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), following the system's language, and English otherwise.
• App names are translated too (Arquivos / Ficheiros, Ajustes / Definições...). System Settings is now just Settings.
• Settings > Language & Region sets the system's language and, separately, the formats of its region.

Fixes that were long overdue

• Electron apps (VS Code, Claude...) no longer snap back to their old size after a resize. The fix is in Sonata's Wayfire.
• X11 apps (Electron in X11 mode, GTK 2/3, Wine...) follow Sonata's theme and Dark Mode. Their menu bars were light in Dark Mode.
• Locked after the display went dark, the screen stays dark. Before, it showed black with the pointer in the middle.
• External monitors' brightness on NVIDIA works through DDC/CI.
• Settings no longer gets stuck on a section after adding a user.
• Web apps on Chrome keep the page's title, so WhatsApp's unread count reaches the Dock.

Also new

• Settings > Appearance: a background colour for Light and Dark Mode that tints the glass too, with eight colours per mode.
• Settings > Dock: folders in the Dock can be removed, added, and Downloads brought back.
• A new wired network icon, an Ethernet port, in the menu bar and Settings.
• The window-resize panel is frosted glass, like the windows.
• Files:
  • a spinner on slow folders;
  • Windows programs show their own icons;
  • fresh thumbnails after an edit;
  • Run / Run in Terminal for scripts;
  • Copy Path in the path bar.
• ç on U.S. International: ' + c types "ç", as on Windows and macOS.
• Software Update asks for the password once.

Installing and updating

git pull
./install.sh

Then log out and back in.

install.sh now builds Wayfire with Sonata's fixes without asking, because the patch set changed. This takes a few minutes. If you use Sonata's login screen, restart once so Switch User's login screen is in place.

Sonata's own updater sees this release as new, from any earlier version.

Full changelog: CHANGELOG.md