Ubuntu Touch is the privacy and freedom-respecting mobile operating system by UBports. Today we are happy to announce the release of Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3, a maintenance release for the 24.04-1.x series. Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3 will become available for the supported Ubuntu Touch devices over the coming days.
This post also contains updates on Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0. We'll talk about what has been happening so far and the challenge we're facing.
What's new?
Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3 is a maintenance release of the 24.04-1.x series. This release contains mostly bug fixes and small improvements. The notable ones are:
- Improved handling of desktop apps, including:
- Allow launching X11 apps outside of Lomiri (e.g. from OpenStore/Snapz0r).
- Fixed dangling placeholder windows and launcher entry when launching X11 apps.
- Fixed launching applications written using GTK4.
- Improved handling of docks with input devices such as NexDock.
- Fixed playing back AMR voice message sent via MMS.
- Fixed scaling factor being slightly off in certain applications (in particular apps which use Qt auto scaling or embedded webview).
- Fixed shutdown hanging on some devices.
- General bug fixes and security updates.
See the full list of changes in both releases at the end of the blog.
How to get Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3
Existing Ubuntu Touch users
Existing users of Ubuntu Touch will receive the updates by going to System Settings > Updates. Devices running Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.2 will receive Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3, while devices running Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-11 or earlier need to update to Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-12 before upgrading to Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3.
Devices will randomly be allocated the update from today through. This spread is to give us a breathing space to stop the roll out of any bad update (should that ever become necessary), and is not to accommodate any bandwidth restrictions.
There is also the system update broadcast facility, which will send each online device a trigger message. If the device can find its update, it will be downloaded for you and when everything is ready, a notification will pop up and you can install right away. This only works if you have set up that updates can be downloaded automatically.
If however you would like to receive the update immediately, turn on ADB access and issue the following command over adb shell:
sudo system-image-cli -v -p 0 --progress dots
Your device should then download the update and install it. This process may take a while, depending on your download speed.
Devices running Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-11 can upgrade to Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3 after updating to 20.04 OTA-12 first.
New Ubuntu Touch users
You will find instructions for installing Ubuntu Touch on your device at https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io.
"I found an issue!"
Have you found a bug? We want to know! Quickly!
You can follow our Bug Reporting document to learn how to present the information we'll need to confirm and fix your issue. Every bit helps. The best way to improve Ubuntu Touch is to use it and then tell us about the experience.
You should always check to see whether your bug has already been reported, from now on at ubuntu-touch issue inbox on Gitlab. Browsing open bugs is worth doing, even if you have nothing to report. This ensures that you can watch for any of the open issues and help fix them by providing more information.
Updates on Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0
It has been ~5 months since the release of Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.0. Since then, we've been relatively quiet on what is next. So I think it's time to talk a little bit about what is going on and what we plan to do next.
At the moment, the primary goal of Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 is to bring a more up-to-date web browser experience to Ubuntu Touch users. Our web browser, Morph Browser, is based on QtWebEngine (QWE), which is a module of the Qt framework. QWE is subsequently based on Chromium, the open-source part of Google Chrome. Each release of QWE will be based on a particular version of Chromium, and currently we're using QWE 5.15.19, based on Chromium version 87.
If you know anything about Chromium or Google Chrome releases, you'll notice that this version is now tens of versions out of date. Web platform is a fast-moving platform, and our out-of-date browser engines is now very much inadequate for today's websites and web applications. Also, while Qt did backport security patches for this version of Chromium, the support for Qt 5.15 has also ended for some time.
So why we can't simply update the the newer version of QWE? The latest version of QWE is now Qt 6.11, part of Qt 6.x series. QWE 6.x is very much not compatible with current Qt 5-based stack we're using in Ubuntu Touch, and require us to migrate a significant part of our stack to Qt 6 as well. At the moment, we've migrated enough part of our stack to Qt 6 to base Morph Browser to it, and if you use Lomiri on Debian Testing, you may notice that the build of Morph Browser their is now based on Qt 6.
However, a lot of existing applications and components are based on Qt 5. This means we have to include both Qt 6 and Qt 5 in our images for the time being. The problem is, some of our supported devices don't have enough space reserved for OS to have both Qt 6 and Qt 5 installed at the same time. So we're currently working to solve this problem and try to bring Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 with up-to-date web browser engine to as many devices as possible. That's the current challenge we're working on at the moment.
We'll have another update once this is complete and Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 is ready for wider testing.
List of changes in Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3 since 24.04-1.2
Changelog of apparmor-easyprof-ubuntu since 2026-02-12:
* hardware/video.d/mtk-common: also support vdec on modern SoCs (@deathmist)
* templates: allow reading libraries in com.android.vndk.v* apex (@deathmist)
Changelog of bluebinder since 2026-02-12:
* New upstream release v1.0.19 (UpdateWatchTower)
Changelog of gst-hybris since 2026-02-12:
* Add extra H.26[45] profile and pixel format mappings from upstream (@NotKit)
Changelog of libgbinder since 2026-02-12:
* Upstream release v1.1.45 (@deathmist)
Changelog of lomiri since 2026-02-12:
* plugins/WindowManager: Make Xwayland appID matching order-dependent (@fredldotme)
* plugins/WindowManager: Match Xwayland surfaces to their placeholders (@fredldotme)
Changelog of lomiri-keyboard since 2026-02-12:
* Prediction engine: Prevent potential segfault (@lduboeuf)
Changelog of lomiri-system-settings since 2026-02-12:
* plugins/security-privacy: Allow coexistence with lomiri-polkit-agent (@fredldotme)
Changelog of lxc-android-config since 2026-02-12:
* etc/systemd: Reduce unit stop timeout to 10s (@fredldotme)
* lib/udev: Fix NexDock trackpad enumeration in Mir (@fredldotme)
Changelog of mediascanner2 since 2026-02-12:
* src/daemon: Support GNOME Tracker's ".trackerignore" file (@group_53986711_bot_92822790c8858b5599712ccf944c70dd)
Changelog of mir1 since 2026-02-12:
* debian/patches: Apply upstream change for libinput device groups (@fredldotme)
Changelog of ofono-binder-plugin since 2026-02-12:
* d/patches: drop obsolete IRadioIms AIDL interface patch (@NotKit)
* New upstream release v1.1.25 (@UpdateWatchTower)
* New upstream release v1.1.24 (@NotKit)
Changelog of pulseaudio-modules-droid since 2026-02-12:
* debian: Upgrade to upstream release 14.2.106 (@fredldotme)
Changelog of qtmir since 2026-02-12:
* src/platforms: Export Xwayland DISPLAY to systemd and DBus (@fredldotme)
Changelog of rootfs-builder-debos since 2026-02-12:
* Jenkinsfile: use arch-specific nodes for building images (@peat-psuwit)
* ubuntu-touch/60-install-click: send frameworks to OpenStore API (@peat-psuwit)
Changelog of sensorfw since 2026-02-12:
* Revert "debian/*: update to version 0.15.1" (@peat-psuwit)
* debian/*: update to version 0.15.1 (@NotKit)
Changelog of snapd since 2026-02-12:
* debian/patches: Ship patch to enable USB device enumeration for FP5+NexDock (@fredldotme)
Changelog of system-image since 2026-02-12:
* systemimage/dbus: block idle exit on Set{Channel,Build} (@peat-psuwit)
* candidates: implement `si_compat_version` and `min_version_detail` check (@peat-psuwit)
* testing/: be more robust when iterating processes (@peat-psuwit)
Changelog of ubuntu-touch since 2026-02-12:
* touch: Ship lomiri-polkit-agent (@fredldotme)
* Drop wireless-tools and packagekit-tools (@mariogrip)
* touch-core: replace gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly with -good-amr (@peat-psuwit)
Changelog of ubuntu-touch-session since 2026-02-12:
* usr: Fix the encrypted's target Greeter behavior (@fredldotme)
* etc/profile.d: Enforce OpenGL renderer on GTK4 (@fredldotme)
* profile.d: tell Qt to not round scale factor up or down (@peat-psuwit)
* systemd/user: Fix lomiri-full-shell crashes returning to greeter (@fredldotme)
* set correctly the path of obexd executable, fixes #31 (@gpatel-fr)