elementary has released version 8.0.2 of its operating system, marking the project’s latest update to the “Circe” series. While it is considered a minor release, the update brings important accessibility fixes, usability improvements, and updated hardware support that will appeal to both new and existing users.
The Installer and Initial Setup have received major accessibility enhancements. Labels and password quality feedback now work properly with screen readers, preventing confusing or missing announcements. The installer is also smarter with custom partition layouts, reducing the risk of crashes. Both tools now appear centered on screen, and Initial Setup introduces more reliable keyboard layout detection while allowing trailing underscores and hyphens in usernames.
The Music app is where users may notice the most changes. You can now remove individual tracks or clear the queue entirely, search by track name, and resume the queue and last played track after restarting. Album art shows up in panel media controls, and new keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+O to add files, Ctrl+Q to quit) make navigation quicker. Performance has also been improved for large queues, and visual quirks with long artist names have been fixed.
Terminal sees bug fixes that smooth out copy and paste behavior, improve focus when opening new windows, and resolve inconsistent window sizing on certain displays. Camera, Videos, Calculator, and Screenshot utilities also get polish, from better menu navigation to crash fixes.
Perhaps the most notable change under the hood, however, is the new hardware enablement stack from Ubuntu, which includes Linux kernel 6.14. This brings improved gaming performance, lower power usage on select AMD and Intel chipsets, expanded gamepad and device support, and additional security features.
elementary OS continues to offer its downloads under a pay-what-you-can model (including $0), with localized builds and a torrent option available directly from elementary.io. The team says version 8.1, planned for release before the end of the year, will be the big milestone update that rolls together all the work since the original launch of elementary OS 8.
