Updates, libs, APIs and other stuff devs and the OS needs. (2026 edition)

Topic for stuff that are missing and would be nice to have for developing apps and making life easier.

There seems to be a need for a fingerprint api so that apps can use he fingerprint reader.

Also read that systemd services are not allowed to be installed by apps (not sure if correct) and might be useful.

Avahi would also be nice to have and options in the settings for it (GUI).

IMO utilizing more features of latest systemd releases will make life easier for the user (user creation, management, encryption, backups etc).

Chime in people.

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Calling arbitrary D-Bus apis. Feel free to limit it to D-Bus calls that are listed in .desktop (or other file) and thus known at install-time, but just don’t limit what people want to do with D-Bus.

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  1. Keyboard api to develop something like gboard on android.
  2. Rootless VPN (IKEv2), routing (per app) APIs like iOS/Android has.
  3. Some display overlay api to implement night mode (blue light filter) app like twilight.

I suspect this needs work in the compositor. Which brings us to the problem of it. Even with xdg-shell added -which solves the app issue- it doesn’t address a huge amount of missing features which i suspect could also be also used for Jollas automotive venture. (ie multiscreen).

  1. I really wish predictive text could be simply toggled on and off without having to uninstall the whole thing. Some applications don’t play nice with it.
  2. CIFS/SMB
  3. +1 for a proper night light

on top of that; integrating Dbus activation by default for example in the sailfishapp wrapper.

Interesting idea… but how would it work without requiring any code in the app or significantly reducing it?

Well, the build of libsailfishapp library would need to register the stub object for the DBus interface. Of course there’s the problem with the naming of the interface; but maybe, just maybe there’s a way around it (via an external / weak ref in the libsailfishapp for example). Assuming this could work, the libsailfishapp could then provide (via script run in the app’s spec file) the templates for on-the-fly generation of stub headers / source files to be built in the code base of the actual application; of course the developer would maybe need to provide some info in the spec file (Organization Name / Application name); “maybe” because it appears the booster takes the name of the exe file as app name… maybe possible; then again; on linux, very many things that seem impossible end up being actually possible :slight_smile:

Can Nightish not accomplish that already?

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There are those who say blue light filters are kinda snake oil.

Nonetheless, there is an experimental Wayland protocol for this specified.

wlr-gamma-control-unstable

I guess this would need to be added, and then

can work.

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Sorry but Nightish is just not an alternative. It turns the entire screen yellow (or another specified color), so if you are using an OLED it actually makes the screen brighter at night.

EDIT: wlsunset is nice, I’ve been using it for years on my Linux desktops.

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