WolOS 0.12: a solid desktop, then a bigger one

WolOS 0.12 is the release that made the desktop solid, and then grew it. It is still a test build, not a stable release, but the installer now explains what it is about to do in plain words. Here is what changed for people using it. The full list is in the Changelog, and the manual was rewritten to match.

Settings and Control Center, redone

Settings has new navigation and a search that finds every pane and every row. It has a new Sound pane (outputs with their codec, a 0 dB mark with Allow Louder, balance, an input level meter, automatic level and noise removal, Bluetooth codec, Pro Audio rate and buffer, troubleshooting) and a new Modules pane. When a save fails, the control now goes back to what is saved, so nothing shows a change that was not kept. Control Center has a tile grid (Battery, Screen Mirroring, Keyboard Brightness, Night Shift, Screenshot, Record, accessibility, Stay Awake) and Sound and Display pages. See Settings and Control Center.

One theme for everything

Press Ctrl+Super+T for a picker with a preview card for every installed theme. One theme now colours window borders, the lock screen, the terminal and the prompt in every shell you use. Theme from your wallpaper makes one from your picture, and wol-hue does the same from the terminal with sliders, and imports Base16 and colors.toml palettes. See wol-hue and Themes in every app.

Plugins you can make

A shell plugin can add menu bar and Dock items, desktop widgets, Control Center tiles, search results, shortcuts, themes and web-app launchers. Each runs in a sandbox with time and size limits, and a plugin that keeps failing is turned off. Tiles, Dock items and shortcuts that run commands run only after you allow it. The Store has a Plugins page fed by a signed index, and Plugin Maker lets you write a plugin or a theme and see it live in a sandboxed preview before you package it. See The Store, Kits and plugins, Plugin Maker and the Plugin API reference.

Optional modules

The base stays small. Developer tools, Claude Code, local AI, saved sessions, creative apps, gaming tools and a richer console are modules: none is ticked for you, each can be removed again, and a module that cannot install is given up after five tries instead of being retried at every start. The installer installs the ones you tick while online; otherwise first boot installs them in the background, with the local AI graphics backend chosen for your machine. See Optional modules.

An installer that explains itself

Every page now says what will happen and what is kept. Secure Boot is a choice, with a picture of the one-time blue screen. Next to Windows, the installer warns before Secure Boot changes about the BitLocker recovery key, refuses a Windows that is hibernated or shut down with Fast Startup so its files cannot be damaged, keeps the clock in local time, and tells you how to choose Windows at start. The US International keyboard no longer stops the install at 90%, an old TPM is no longer offered as TPM unlock, and when an install fails the Failed page says what failed and a log stays on the installed system. See Installing WolOS and Installing next to Windows.

Secure Boot on the live stick

The live USB stick now boots with Secure Boot on: the first start asks once to enrol the WolOS key from the stick, and the stick carries a README with the steps. Secure Boot walks through both blue screens, the one on the stick and the one on the installed system.

Hardening you can feel

Apps talking to the system service are identified the moment they connect and both sides confirm each other before any request. Every change made as root shows a sheet on your screen, and the most sensitive actions always ask for your password. Services run in a sandbox by default, everything read from files, sockets and plugins has size and depth limits and is fuzz-tested, and the malware check refuses a file it could not scan instead of letting it through. The plugin index and the update feed are signed and carry a serial number, so an old copy cannot be replayed to hold back updates. See Privacy and permissions and Security.

Smaller things

Web apps with wol webapp add; wol toggle and wol remind; wol sessions save|restore|list; clipboard history that never keeps one-time codes; screenshots to the clipboard with a pen to mark them up; Spaces shortcuts on Ctrl+Alt so Ctrl+1..4 go back to your apps; a new icon set; Esc no longer starts a helper program in every app. The wol command reference lists every command.

How it is built

One build path: code in wolos, recipes in wolos-pkgbuilds, the image in wolos-iso, every package built in a clean chroot on our own build farm, and the ISO only from the published repo. A release is signed only after its ISO passed the VM test, and WolOS is now GPL-2.0-or-later (libwol is BSD-2-Clause). The Wonderland Doctrine, our code of conduct, is published at /doctrine.

What is not done yet

The CDN for packages is not switched on, so packages come from the release host. The update feed does not expire yet; only its serial number keeps an old copy out. wol jail run and a codecs module are planned for 0.13, and plugin kinds for looks and window manager rules are planned too.

Get it

The ISO, its checksum and the Secure Boot and VirtualBox notes are on the Download page.