Ubuntu Touch Q&A 181

Here is a GEMINI summary of Ubuntu Touch Q&A 181, streamed on January 10, 2026.

The central theme of development is the ongoing migration of the entire system to Qt 6.

Morph Browser: A new Qt 6 version has been released to the OpenStore under the UBports account. It features enhancements like camera support and hardware-accelerated video decoding (coming soon). Users are advised to uninstall the old version from Marius and install this new official one to avoid conflicts.
Lomiri Desktop: Significant progress is being made on the desktop environment.
- The XDG Desktop Portal is being worked on to support file pickers, app pickers, and notifications.
- Biometrics, the UI toolkit gallery, and Lomiri gestures have been ported to Qt 6.
- Clickable now supports a config for 24.04, allowing developers to build and test the Lomiri shell more easily.

Fairphone 5: Received a kernel upgrade to 5.4.32, the last supported version for that branch.
“Bratz” Phone (Likely Volla Phone): The hosts teased that news regarding this device will be announced very soon.
New Mainline Device: A teaser was dropped for a new device project coming in the second half of the year that will support Ubuntu Touch natively.

The host showcased several new applications available on the OpenStore:

Cross Messenger: A professional-looking messenger app that appears to support voice and video calls (possibly Jitsi-based).
Pure Maps (Unconfined): A new unconfined version is available, which supports communication with smartwatches.
Drawing Apps: Two new drawing apps were highlighted: Scratchboard (simple drawing) and Sketcher (supports shapes and image imports).
Games: Several games were released, including Snake, Latin Defense, and block-puzzle games like Blockerino. It was noted that some of these currently crash on the “Noble” version of the OS.
Utilities: AF Valwijzer (Dutch trash collection schedule) and Parallax (an app that generates a privacy score based on installed app permissions).

Lockscreen Widgets: A user asked for widgets (calendar, weather) on the lock screen. The developers explained that true widgets would require each to run as a Wayland client, which is architecturally difficult right now. Users currently have to rely on the existing circular frames for basic info.
Tracking Wayland/Mir Progress: A user asked where to follow development as GitLab issues seem stale. The hosts suggested looking at the Debian Salsa UBports group for the most active discussions.
Native Linux Apps (Libertine): A user asked if Libertine would support Wayland apps (like GNOME Calls) natively. The response was that Libertine is primarily for X11 legacy support. Ideally, native Linux apps should be packaged as Click packages to run properly on Ubuntu Touch.

Alfred: Hopes for growth and the release of the LVM root filesystem extension.
Host: Hopes for more community involvement in the Foundation’s decision-making process (Board of Trustees) and for more governments and organizations to support alternatives to iOS and Android.

Game in the Brain