Phosh 0.52 introduces QR hotspot, brightness lock screen gesture and Rust wallpaper portal

Phosh 0.52 launches with several updates aimed at improving its usability for mobile and touch-based devices. The hotspot plugin now provides a QR code with hotspot details, making it simpler to connect other devices securely. Alongside this, users can adjust screen brightness using a new lock screen gesture, adding a convenient accessibility shortcut.

In the mobile settings application, the conf-tweaks system now leverages a sysfs backend, streamlining postmarketOS tweaks and reducing the need for multiple settings apps. Continuing platform improvements, gmobile has gained support for handling various display corner radii, while phoc ensures these are rendered accurately, offering a more polished experience on devices with rounded corners.

The wallpaper portal is now implemented in Rust, bringing all user-facing portals to a consistent codebase in this language. For developers and advanced users, the newly introduced DebugControl interface allows runtime management of debug options.

Addressing usability, this release fixes two persistent on-screen keyboard bugs: the occasional unfolding delay and text preedit issues affecting subsequent input fields. Updated translations and additional bug fixes are also included, boosting overall reliability and usability.