A busy week of fixes and refinements as we close in on Budgie Desktop 10.10.2. Let's get into it!

#Budgie Desktop (10.10)

#Dialog Focus Fixes

If you started using the sloppy or mouse focus mode support we landed in 10.10.1, you may have noticed the Run and Power dialogs would hide themselves the moment focus changed (#884). Now, when those modes are active, the respective dialog waits until your cursor is actually over it before it decides to hide when focus moves elsewhere.

#Environment File Handling Rework

We reworked how we handle environment files (#865). The bridge now has freedesktop locale1 support, falling back to /etc/default/keyboard if defined, then to a US keyboard layout as a last resort. XKB options are now properly sourced and merged from GSettings, systemd-localed, and /etc/default/keyboard rather than being hardcoded. The environment file is no longer rewritten on each login. Instead, it merges user-made changes while still writing bridge-controlled items like the locale.

#Session and Plumbing Fixes

A bunch of under-the-hood fixes landed this week. XDG Desktop Portal startup (#872) xdg-desktop-portal is now explicitly launched in our startlabwc script, sidestepping an issue where it would not start (via systemd) due to how we start the session. I had originally tinkered with having it be a service similar to what we do for some gsd- binaries. However, it doesn't seem to provide the correct signal to inform budgie-session that it has started and to continue with other parts of the session startup, resulting in the rest of the session being blocked. So while imperfect (there might be some further tweaks or tinkering before release), it at least launches more consistently now at session start. Fortunately, for Budgie 11 our session management will be much more sane, as I have mentioned before in our State of the Budgie: 2025 post, so we can put effort there into doing it the "right way" in the future. Locale-aware menu categories (#880) Previously, after changing your locale, application menu categories remained in English alphabetical order. This has been fixed, and categories are now properly sorted according to the active locale. App indexer refresh (#879) The refresh timer in AppIndexer was treating its interval as seconds, but the underlying Vala Timeout actually operates in milliseconds, causing the application menu to get confused when apps were installed or removed due to the timeout happening far too quickly. Touchpad left-handed separation (#878) The labwc bridge incorrectly assumed touchpad and mouse left-handed settings were the same. Since labwc allows separating these, the bridge now handles them independently. There's no Budgie Control Center UI for this yet, but you can configure it directly via gsettings. Budgie Menu sizing (#873) The menu sizing fix mentioned as pending in Chirp #6 has now landed. Compiler standard removal (#885) Our definition of c_std=c11 in our meson.build for budgie-desktop has been removed, as its definition was starting to cause compilation errors on Ubuntu 26.04. On most modern toolchains (Fedora, Ubuntu, Solus, etc.), budgie-desktop should now be compiling with the default stdc version (202311L / C23).

#Crystal Dock Background Support

Under wlroots compositors, Crystal Dock's autohide could leave a noticeable 1px bleed-through on light backgrounds when an app is maximized (#847). We now detect when Crystal Dock is running and add a small black edge border on the background to cover this up. Ubuntu Budgie will be offering Crystal Dock as part of its solution.

#Pending Pull Requests

These are still in review or recently opened, and we're hoping to land them for 10.10.2:

• Rework Icon Task List application matching and icon display: cleans up app matching for non-standard apps (Tilix, Java apps, snaps) and misbehaving ones like Proton Pass that report a different class ID than their desktop file. This should improve desktop file and icon detection as well as pinning.
• Remove obsolete bluetooth and cheese code in Budgie Control Center

#Road to 10.10.2

With most of our targeted fixes now merged and the rest expected to merge throughout the week, Budgie 10.10.2 is looking in really good shape. We have planned the release of Budgie 10.10.2 for this coming Saturday (March 7th). Then attention can turn back to Budgie 11. I know I'm certainly looking forward to that!

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That wraps up this Chirp! Thanks for following along!