KDE Plasma 6.7, the next major release of the popular Linux desktop environment, is now available for Beta testing.

The new version of this free open-source desktop environment introduced many new features with better AMD laptops, and Intel GPUs support.

The new desktop version added adaptive backlight management support. It’s AMD laptops feature that reduces power use by reducing screen backlight brightness and modifying colors in an attempt to preserve readability with the reduced brightness.

For Intel GPUs with i915 or Intel XE drivers, the 6.7 version now enables “Overlay planes” feature by default, which improves the video playback and effects performance, as well reduces the power usage.

Besides the hardware specific features, this version also introduced new sliding notifications effect that provides eye candy animation when a notification appears or disappears.

It added dark mode toggle in the brightness indicator, GNOME-style “background apps” in system tray, Vietnamese lunar calendar, as well as time zone offsets display (how many hours local time differs from other locations) in Digital Clock widget.

Dark Mode Toggle in brightness applet

The microphone indicator now has a new Push to Talk feature which is useful for online meetings. With the feature enabled, user may press and hold “Meta + B” key combination then start talking, and release to stop. And, click on the microphone icon will disable this push to talk feature.

For users who have multiple monitors setup, plasma 6.7 now features per-monitor virtual desktops. With the feature enabled, virtual desktops exist independently on different screens. It supports switching virtual desktops independently for each screen, and, switching desktops via keyboard shortcuts or other methods affects the currently active screen only.

For artists, the new version added an option to sync tablet cursor position with the mouse, as well as the ability to set an ICC profile with HDR enabled.

Discover, the software app has been updated with “Applications”, “Addons”, “Runtimes” etc categories in Installed page, new option to Close Discover ‘On Completion’, and some fixes and improvements for Flatpak apps and repositories.

It also updated the printing system with easy options to setup printers shared from Windows network, new print queue manager app, and “Number of active and queued print jobs” badges on Printers widget.

Other changes include:

• RGB lighting control for qmk/via keyboards.
• PageUp/PageDown to switch virtual desktops.
• Option to choose default calendar.
• Add Projects directory to xdg-user-dirs.
• Microphone test capability in audio settings.
• Middle-click on digital clock to open calendar app.
• Option to whether show global menu on all monitors.
• Option to show Alt+Tab switcher only in primary screen.
• Press-and-hold keys for special characters (e.g., á, ê, õ).
• Drag’n’drop adding/removing favorites for Kickoff, Kicker, Dashboard.

For more about this Beta, see the announcement.

Try out KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta

Like GNOME, Plasma now has a KDE Linux available for testing purpose.

For Arch Linux, the new 6.7 Beta has already been made available through its KDE Unstable repository. And, (K)Ubuntu users may keep an eye on the KUbuntu PPAs, which may or may not build Plasma 6.7 for 26.04 in near future.

Scrcpy, the popular tool to mirror and control Android screen on your computer or laptop, released new major 4.0 version a few days ago.

The new version of this free open-source application ported from SDL2 to SDL3, added flex display, and many other exciting new features.

Android Screen on Ubuntu Desktop

First, the new version migrated the backend for video rendering and input handling from SDL2 to SDL3, to benefit from active maintenance, bug fixes, and continued upstream support.

The new SDL3 backend also introduced new features. Previously, it added black borders when resizing (scaling) the Android screen to keep the content aspect ratio. With the new API, the window aspect ratio is preserved while resizing, but without black borders.

Though, if you want, add --no-window-aspect-ratio-lock flag when starting scrcpy to restore the old behavior.

now black borders by default when scaling, but with option to restore

Scrcpy 3.0 introduced a virtual display feature, allowing to start an app silently in your Android then mirror to PC desktop. So you can play Android games on PC, while the physical Android screen is not affected at the same time.

With version 4.0, you can now resize the virtual display window just like a native PC software window. Meaning that you can run Android app or game on PC with custom size that you like.

To enable this feature, start scrcpy with either -x or --flex-display option, along with --new-display which starts a virtual display.

For example, run the command below to start the Android’s Firefox via virtual display on PC screen with re-sizable support.

scrcpy --new-display --flex-display --start-app=org.mozilla.firefox

The resizing may contain glitches, and it preserves the DPI, which is default to 160. Though, you can set custom DPI by --new-display=1920x1080/240 option when starting the virtual display, and, increase the bit-rate and change the codec for better quality on large window:

scrcpy --new-display=1920x1080/240 --flex-display --video-codec=h265 -b16M

Android Virtual Display is resizable

Scrcpy 4.0 also added more controls for your Android’s camera. You may use --camera-torch option to start Android screen mirroring with camera torch on, and/or use --camera-zoom=1.5 option to set camera zoom level.

Or, use MOD + t key combination to turn on camera torch dynamically and use MOD + Shift + t to disable it. And, use MOD + Up/Down arrows to zoom in/out.

It as well introduced new --keep-active option to prevent screen from turning off due to idle by simulating user activity.

Other changes in Scrcpy 4.0 include:

• New background color command option.
• Show a disconnected icon for 2 seconds when connection lost.
• Add F11 full-screen shortcut.
• Add Mod + q quit shortcut.
• New option to configure the minimum video size alignment.
• New option to configure how the rendering fits the window.

Get Scrcpy 4.0

The official release note as well as the packages for Linux, macOS, and Windows are available in Github via the link below:

For Linux on modern Intel/AMD platform, select download the “scrcpy-linux-x86_64-v4.0.tar.gz” package, then extract, move executable files to your PATH, and done.

For beginners, here’s a step by step guide show you how to install and use Scrcpy in Ubuntu.

NVIDIA VA-API driver, the VA-API hardware acceleration implemention using NVIDIA GPU, released new 0.0.17 version a few days ago.

The new version of this free open-source library fixed only two but important bugs for JPEG decoding and NVIDIA DGX Spark memory systems.

Firefox Web Content acceleration through NVIDIA GPU

As you may know, Linux has several ways (VA-API, VDPAU, AMF, NVDEC, or Vulkan Video) for decoding video content with GPU hardware acceleration. Firefox, the most popular and default browser in many Linux Distributions, however only supports VA-API so far in Linux.

Both Intel and AMD GPUs support VA-API, but NVIDIA does NOT. If you’re Firefox user but running Linux on computer with NVIDIA GPU, then the web content will be always decoded by your CPU by default.

To workaround the issue, the free open-source NVIDIA VA-API driver was born.

JPEG Decoding support

The driver previously supports for decoding AV1, H.264, HEVC, VP8, VP9, MPEG-2, VC-1 codecs. With the new 0.0.17, JPEG decoding is also supported.

The JPEG codec was previously unusable due to a structural mismatch. VI-API outputs decoded data as separate buffers (e.g., picture params, quantization tables, Huffman tables, slice params/data), but NVIDIA NVDEC expects a fully formed JPEG bitstream.

To fix this mismatch, NVIDIA VA-API driver since 0.0.17 now creates smallest valid JPEG file that conforms to the JFIF standard, directly from the VA-API buffers, before handing it off to NVDEC.

According to the feature request, the results are exactly identical at the byte level and hash-verified compare to the decoding outputs using the native NVDEC (CUDA). Though there are few limitations (see the previous link).

Fix for DGX Spark

NVIDIA DGX Spark, the desktop AI supercomputer, uses unified system memory shared between the CPU and GPU rather than discrete VRAM.

NVIDIA VA-API driver will now check twice during initialization to make sure it’s running on NVIDIA device with discrete VRAM or unified memory.

When unified memory is detected, it will remember the detection result, add required dependencies from open-gpu-kernel-modules, and use the correct new method to allocate memory. Thus, it will work properly on DGX Spark with Firefox.

Get NVIDIA VA-API Driver 0.0.17

The source tarball as well as the release note is available in Github page via the link below:

For Ubuntu users who want to try it out without building by yourself, I’ve made the new version into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 25.10 and Ubuntu 26.04.

If you don’t know how to get it work, see either the official README or follow this step by step guide.

Audacious, the lightweight music player with both Qt and GTK UI, announced the Beta for next 4.6 version yesterday.

The new version of this free open-source player app added built-in file browser, macOS Now Playing, other new features and various bug-fixes.

First, the new version introduced a built-in file browser, which can be enabled by going to File -> Settings -> Plugins -> General.

It allows to browse or search supported music files in your local computer, then either drag’n’drop into playlist, or use right-click menu options to play, add to (or create) playlist.

Audacious Qt UI with file browser plugin enabled

The built-in file browser is useful for users, who have a large mount of music files, to quickly find out what you want to play and/or manage playlists.

Thanks to Thomas, GTK users may right-click below the title bar to get the menu to dock the file-manager into main window.

The Winamp classic interface still requires windowing system features that are not supported in Wayland. So for Ubuntu, Fedora Workstaion, and other Linux running Wayland session, the Winamp UI will default to XWayland compatibility mode.

And, a toggle option is added to Advanced settings page, allowing user to easily disable XWayland when trying to switch to GTK or QT user interface.

Winamp UI defaults to XWayland on Wayland session.

Audacious 4.6 Beta also updated its UI with Bitrate, File Created/Modified dates support in playlist, though user needs to enable them manually from Appearance settings page.

It added the Playback History plugin for GTK UI, and a setting option to re-enable the confirm dialog for users who checked “Don’t ask again” in Remove Playlist dialog.

It as well added support for .mpc Musepack audio file, support for all AIFF file extensions (.aif, .aifc, .aiff) and MIME types (audio/aiff and audio/x-aiff), and support for reading lyrics tag from Opus, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files.

New playlist columns available

For users who prefer using keyboard shortcut, the release added global hotkeys support for previous/next album action, and support using Delete and F2 keys in Playlist Manager dialog.

And for macOS users, Audacious 4.6 beta added macOS Now Playing plugin for monitoring and controlling audio playback in the Control Center or Menu Bar. And, it removed the Mac Media Keys plugin.

Other changes include:

• Drag’n’drop into Qt winamp UI support.
• Read ReplayGain tags with FFmpeg plugin, meaning more files support.
• Allow using Previous control to go to the last track in playlist for Repeat mode.
• Support exporting playlist via audtool CLI tool.
• Use localized music directory for Search Tool.
• Load companion .m3u/.m3u8 with Game Console Music Decoder for subsong metadata.

There are as well many bug-fixes, removal of deprecated Audacious code and APIs, and more.

Try out audacious 4.6 Beta

The official release note, as well as the source tarballs are available in the software website via the link below:

Besides building from the source, I’ve built the new version into this unofficial PPA for those who want to try it out, though keep in mind this is a Beta version that may have bugs!

Ubuntu has rolled out the release schedule for next 26.10, and even the 27.04 and 27.10 releases.

Ubuntu 26.10, code-name Stonking Stingray, is scheduled to be released on October 15, 2026. Here are the dates for major events as planned before the final release.

Image by Axel Schäfer from Pixabay

Ubuntu 26.10 is a short term release with 9-month support. If everything goes well, it will feature GNOME 51 desktop and perhaps kernel 7.3 according to the history kernel release interval.

And, according to this thread, 26.10 will probably include AI features that will not enable by default and can be disabled during setup. For more features of Ubuntu 26.10, keep an eye on the ongoing release note page.

Ubuntu 26.10 Release Schedule

The developer team has uploaded the toolchain (e.g., GCC, binutils, glibc) and started building new packages for 26.10 since April 30.

The table below includes the major Ubuntu 26.10 and GNOME 51 development events.

NOTE: GNOME 51 is developed by another team, not Ubuntu.

According to the last few Ubuntu dev circles, there will be probably 4 monthly snapshot releases, e.g., snapshot 1 in May, snapshot 2 in June, snapshot 3 in July, and snapshot 4 in August. They are however NOT mentioned in the release schedule so far.

For more, see the official Ubuntu 26.10 release schedule, which also includes the 27.04 and 27.10 release plan in “Future Releases” section in left side-bar. And, see release calendar for the schedule of GNOME Desktop.

And, if you want to try out the latest .iso image, keep an eye on the cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live.

FFmpeg, the popular multimedia library, released new 8.1.1 version few days ago.

This is a maintenance release that includes mostly bug-fixes, stability improvements, as well as few minor new features.

FFmpeg 8.1.1 updated the ALS decoder for MPEG‑4 ALS audio streams with patch to preserve the full floating‑point value so the decoded audio is accurate and truly lossless.

It ensures nbits is always valid, preventing mis-decoding and potential crashes, and, ensures read_diff_float_data() errors is properly returned by read_frame_data() instead of being ignored, making the decoder safer and more reliable. As well, it fixed the logic for mantissa unpacking in compressed Part A path.

The release added the missing parts of OTTs band phase reconstruction and residual band computation to the USAC/xHE‑AAC decoder, and, fixed an out-of-bounds memoery access for this decoder.

To prevent crashes, corrupted outputs, and/or security issues, it added a safety check to ensure nb_samples is valid in the DFPWM decoder, added a missing return after an error log in the RALF (RealAudio Lossless Format) audio decoder, and, fixed a use‑after‑free bug in the RASC decoder’s decode_move() function.

It as well cleared invalid/stale pointers from the H.264 reference lists, fixed a bug where the H.264/H.265 SEI parser used provider_code before initializing it, and, improved the input‑buffer size validation in TDSC decoder which also improve the stability.

Other codec changes include fix for signed integer overflow in the Nintendo 64 ADPCM decoder, safety bug fix in the ZMBV (Zip Motion Block Video) decodeer to prevent memory corruption, missing padding bytes added to the WMA (Windows Media Audio) encoder’s extradata to fix compatibility issues, and fix for a memory leak in the VP9 codec‑bitstream (CBS) parser.

Besides fixes for the encoders and decoders, the new 8.1.1 also has many improvements to the libavformat library for container, demuxer, and muxer handling.

It added a maximum size limit to MOV/MP4 demuxer when parsing the lhvc box inside mov_read_lhvc(), added checks to ensure the extradata is valid before accessing it with mov_read_dops() function. And, the demuxer now rejects dimg box references that contain zero entries.

It as well added LIST chunk size and INFO list size validation before parsing for AVI demuxer, fixed potential out‑of‑bounds read in the RTSP demuxer, and, added sanity check to the RTP decoder for QDM2 audio to ensure that the block_size value extracted from incoming RTP packets is valid, sanity check to the JPEG‑over‑RTP decoder to ensure that the quantization table length (qtable_len) is valid, validation check to the MPEG‑4 RTP decoder to ensure that AU Header Sections (Access Unit headers) are not zero‑length.

For libavfilter, it added a minimum input‑height check to the kerndeint video filter, fixed logic bug caused by incorrect operator precedence in the v360 filter, and incorrect handling of sscanf() return values inside the af_pan filter.

There are as well dozens of other changes. See the Changelog file in source tarball for details.

Get FFmpeg 8.1.1

The source for the new release is available to download in its website via the link below:

Besides building from the source or waiting for your distribution updates, Ubuntu user may try this unofficial PPA in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, or Ubuntu 26.04.

To do so, open terminal and run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg8
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ffmpeg

Note that the PPA package may break dependencies, as many graphic apps depend on FFmpeg. You may install ppa-purge and use it to purge the PPA to restore system default FFmpeg library.

sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg8

Photoflare, the free open-source Qt-based image editor, released new major 1.7.0 version few days ago.

This is a much bigger release since the last 1.6.0 version that was released more than 6 years ago. New features include Qt6 port, GMIC integration dark mode improvements, and more.

The new version finally ported its UI from Qt5 to Qt6 for modern platforms support, better performance, and some out of the box HiDPI scaling to make the app window sharper on high-resolution displays.

It completely rewritten the canvas rendering pipeline, which significantly improved the painting and filter performance and reduced memory usage when editing large images with 1080p, 4K, or higher resolutions.

This version as well added full integration of G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing). Simply download & install G’MIC (for all interface) from its website, Photoflare will automatically find the executable file and allow to use these hundreds of advanced filters and effects via the “Filter” menu.

The app now displays horizontal and vertical rulers on the canvas, though user can disable it in Views menu. The selection tool has been updated with ellipse and lasso support. And, it now displays coordinates and selection size on status bar, and, rotates the selection area when rotating canvas.

It as well added 4 new filters. They are Pixelate filter to blur image, new Vignette filter to fade the edges or corners of an image, Pixel Scatter to apply pixel explosion effect, and Sketch filter to turn image into black-and-white pencil drawings style.

Photoflare 1.7.0 added an initial plugin system, allowing third-party developers to extend the application with new image filters and file format exporters. See this page for details.

Other changes include:

• AppImage for Linux.
• New icons for dark mode.
• Resize canvas by percentage.
• Pan image while zooming.
• Paste as new image, with rotate and scale support.
• Preserve EXIF metadata on save.
• Use mouse or arrow keys to move the selection.
• Improve batch processing with file format validation, multiple file path selection, and additional filter options.

Get Photoflare

Photoflare provides installer packages for Linux and Windows, which are available to download in its website via the link below:

For Ubuntu, it’s an official PPA that contains the .deb package for Ubuntu 25.10 and Ubuntu 26.04.

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one to add PPA & install the image editor:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:photoflare/photoflare-stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install photoflare

Old Ubuntu and other Linux may try the non-install AppImage package which is available to download under “Assets” section in Github releases page.

Note: Ubuntu since 22.04 needs to install libfuse2 library to enable AppImage support by running the command below:

sudo apt install libfuse2

Inkscape, the free open-source vector graphics editor, released new 1.4.4 version for Linux, Windows, and macOS users.

The new version of this GTK application introduced various stability fixes, some new features, and performance improvements.

First, Inkscape 1.4.4 is a bridge release that:

Inkscape 1.4.4 is also a bridge release in the sense that it can be used to convert the planned Inkscape 1.5 multipage file format to the pre-1.5 multipage format. Versions lower than Inkscape 1.4.3 will not be able to interpret pages created in Inkscape versions 1.5 and upwards.

The new features include new tool option for Star / Polygon Tool to rotate the selected star or polygon into an upright position, and, a new palette for the colors used by elementary OS.

Besides the new features, the new version also introduced some performance boosts. Zooming in on a document with lots of paths, copy’n’pasting large numbers of objects with gradients, opening the dialog with many objects selected, and selecting paths with the Object Properties dialog open are now much faster!

As well, editing gradients with the Gradient Tool is faster now, because the editor does no longer continuously update the tool controls bar anymore.

The new 1.4.4 version also fixed various issues. Up / Down arrow keys can now navigate between objects in layer and object panel. The expander arrows now clickable in RTL (Right to Left) languages. And, text rendering now respects the language metadata (xml:lang)for each tspan separately, instead of using the last tspan‘s language setting for the whole text.

It as well fixed 20 crashes issues, such as crash when starting app with multi-entries for the same file in recent list, starting app with a graphics tablet plugged in, trying to open SVG file with broken markers, and various other cases.

Other changes in Inkscape 1.4.4 in include:

• Add ability to keyboard shortcut for Paste on page.
• No longer open a terminal window for Windows on ARM.
• Add libuemf submodule.
• And translation updates.

This version also includes some known issues, see the release note page for details.

How to Install Inkscape 1.4.4

Inkscape provides official packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS, which are available to download via the link below:

For Linux, it’s non-install AppImage. Just add executable permission from its Properties dialog, then run to start the graphics editor.

Ubuntu user may choose install the Snap package which is available in App Center or Ubuntu Software. Also, there’s a Flatpak pacakge available in the Flathub repository.

For Ubuntu and Linux Mint, there’s also an official PPA that contains the native .deb packages for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 25.10 and 26.04.

This tutorial shows how to enhance the default GNOME’s built-in screenshot tool with on-screen editing (annotation), OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and other basic features in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

GNOME, the default Ubuntu desktop, introduced built-in screenshot/screencast tool since version 42. It’s great but lacks features such as changing saving directory and image file format.

Gnome’s built-in screenshot tool with annotation support

Thankfully, Alexander Vanhee, a member of GNOME Foundation, make an extension few months ago that enhances the built-in screenshot tool with long requested features before GNOME supports them officially.

It’s Gradia Capture, an extension that adds on-screen annotating support when you trying to capture a selection of screen area. As you see in the screenshot above, the annotation supports free-hand tool, rectangle, text, highlighter, arrow, and number stamp tools with different colors, undo, reset support.

Besides annotation support, it also allows you to change the file format between PNG, WebP, and AVIF, configure whether to capture parent windows when a transient window (e.g., Nautilus context menu) is selected, play sound or not.

And, it adds keyboard shortcuts support for actions, such as switch selection mode,  copy to clipboard, and toggle pointer visibility, as well as annotation tools, and system keybindings.

As you see in the screenshot, after installed the popular Gradia annotator tool, it can also extract text from your selected screen area using the installed OCR models.

Other features include:

• Save to custom location (Ctrl+S to open save as dialog).
• Support “disable initial selection” when you trigger the screenshot tool.
• Button to open screenshot in Gradia for further editing support.
• Button to open screenshot folder.

As a new project, it will probably add more new features, such as blur tool to hide sensitive data. And, you can request features by going to the project page.

Install Gradia Capture to Enhance the GNOME Screenshot Tool

The extension so far supports GNOME 49 and 50. Meaning that you can install it in Ubuntu 26.04 and 25.10, Fedora 43/44 Workstation, and Arch etc distributions. And, someone reported it also works in GNOME 48.

The extension so far is not made into extensions.gnome.org, you can install it via the 3 commands below.

First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to clone the source:

git clone https://github.com/AlexanderVanhee/gradia-capture.git

Run sudo apt install git to install git if you don’t have it.

Next, navigate to the source folder:

cd gradia-capture

Finally, run the script to install the extension to local folder (.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions):

./build.sh -i

To apply changes, log out and back in. And, enable the extension in either “GNOME Extensions” or “Extension Manager” app, which are available in GNOME Software or App Center (filter by Debian package).

Enable the extension via Extension Manager

Install Gradia for ORC support

As mentioned, the extension requires Gradia for the optical character recognition support.

Fedora with third-party repository enabled can easily search & install it from GNOME Software. While, Ubuntu and Ubuntu may run the 2 commands below one by one to get it:

• First, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to enable Flatpak support:

  sudo apt install flatpak

• Next, install Gradia flatpak package via command:

  flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/be.alexandervanhee.gradia.flatpakref

Finally, press PrintScreen key or use the top-right quick settings menu option to trigger the screenshot tool, and you’ll see the new ORC button when selecting a rectangle area.

qBittorrent, the popular Qt BitTorrent application, released new major 5.2.0 version yesterday.

The new version of this free open-source app introduced many improvements to its Qt UI and Web UI, optimized search engine support, and fixed various issues.

First, the new version exchanged the “Add Torrent File” and “Add Torrent Link” button, so the plus icon goes first in the tool-bar. And, it added “Torrent Creator” tool-bar button, allowing users to quickly open the dialog for sharing files with others.

It also ability to display free disk space in the bottom status bar in both QT and Web UI, allowing to glance at how much free space left in your operating system. Though, the feature is not enabled by default, and user can go to Preferences -> Behavior to enable it.

qBittorrent 5.2.0 now allows to configure style and color scheme on all supported platforms. User may go to Preference -> Behavior -> Interface setting page to select an app style (e.g., System, Fusion, Windows) and color scheme (light, dark, for follow system color).

For users who prefer custom colors, the colors of progress bar and pieces bar are now customizable, though it may not work in some desktops. And, it added options to disable torrent state colors, and, make progress bar to follow torrent state color.

Besides UI changes, the new version also implemented a new separate “Tracker Status” filter. Enable the feature will add a new category in the left sidebar that groups torrents by the status of their trackers.

It added options to auto reboot when downloads done, set torrent share limits per category, and, configure the number of seconds before the internal host name resolver considers a cache value timed out.

As well, it now calculates torrent pieces asynchronously, supports copying content paths of selected torrents to clipboard, and, persists additional trackers and load on startup.

The Web UI that allows to control the qBittorrent downloading from a remote device (e.g., mobile phone) via web browser has been enhanced with many new features.

Instead of popping up an ugly upload dialog, the Web UI now opens your system native file chooser for adding torrent file. And, the “Add Torrent Link” dialog has been simplified to only show the box for pasting links, while the torrent options have been removed.

Web UI now uses system native file chooser

Besides the new “Add Torrent” experience, it also switched icons from GIFs to SVG, and added ability to increase display density for better HiDPI display support.

And, it added horizontal scrolling of tabs, footer scrolling in mobile, and improved search page experience on mobile.

Other Web UI changes in 5.2.0 include:

• Create new torrents.
• Tracker status filter.
• Tracker list features.
• Edit tracker tier.
• Share limit action.
• Add I2P peers to peer list.
• Add/remove tracker from selected torrents.

For Linux, qBittorrent 5.2.0 removed the memory (RAM) usage limit option as it’s not effective. For Windows, it added ARM64 build support through NSIS. And for macOS, it added semi-native Window menu, options to toggle speed indicator in dock and show/hide status bar icon, as well as status bar menu with DL/UL display.

Other changes in this new major version include:

• Add “Created On” column to display the torrent creation date & time.
• Improve resume queue load performance.
• Restore default drag behavior in Torrent Content widget.
• Authenticate via API key (WebAPI).
• Support persisting WebUI client preferences.
• Switch to lightweight clipboard library (WebUI).
• Add SOCKS4/SOCKS4a proxy support to search engine.
• Enforce SOCKS proxy setting in search engine plugins.
• New translations.

Get qBittorrent 5.2.0

The new version also includes many other features and bug-fixes, see the NEWs page for details.

And the installer packages for Windows, macOS, and Linux are available to download at the link below:

For Linux, it’s an AppImage that can run to launch the app without installation (add executable permission first). Though, Ubuntu needs to add AppImage support by running command:

sudo apt install libfuse2

For choice, Ubuntu user may select install the community maintained Snap package from App Center (or Ubuntu Software). While, there’s also an official Flatpak package available in flathub.

If you prefer the native DEB package, then keep an eye on this unofficial PPA, which is being updated at the moment for the current Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.