Noctalia 5.2 arrives with redesigned window switcher, expanded theming options, and more

The Noctalia Wayland shell project has released version 5.2, a feature-focused update that brings notable refinements to window management, panels, and customization. Headlining the release is a fully redesigned window switcher on the desktop, complete with an animated preview carousel, a more compact layout, and new filters for viewing windows by output or workspace. Users of the Umbriel overview also gain type-to-launch support, allowing applications to be started directly from the keyboard, while lock-screen transitions are now configurable. Complementing these changes, the update introduces a panels' launcher provider for opening built-in and plugin panels, including individual Control Center tabs.

The release also places a strong emphasis on audio and theming. Noctalia 5.2 adds Freedesktop sound theme support alongside a picker for browsing installed themes, ships new charger and screenshot sounds, and enables UI sounds by default. Plugin developers benefit from expanded tooling as well, including UI tooltips for boxes, rows, columns, and images, plus theme color lookup by color role. On the settings side, users can now search for installed plugins, take advantage of a monitor override dialog with detected-output selection, expand all settings' groups by default, and browse replacement choices in list editors even after hitting the item limit. Japanese speakers round out the headline additions with new language support.

Beyond the features, the 5.2 update addresses a broad set of stability and reliability issues. Among the notable fixes, the Secret Service and encrypted storage now properly recover when the default keyring starts locked and unlocks later, audio playback reconnects gracefully after PipeWire restarts, and tray icons appear reliably for applications that only create them once a watcher is available. Improvements also touch window matching in the taskbar and dock, wallpaper symlink resolution, handling of enhanced open Wi-Fi networks, calendar calculations under libical 4, and theme reload integration for Firefox and Ghostty.