Making the desktop easier to see, hear and use.

October 20 brought larger desktop text, spoken login and lock screens, Files thumbnails, signed and encrypted Mail, and clearer choices when closing work.

October 20 focused on making Ecliptic easier to use in everyday situations: reading small text, finding a control by keyboard, hearing the login screen, recognizing a file, or deciding what should happen before a restart. Mail also gained signed and encrypted messages, with explicit choices about keys and what remains private.

Some changes reached the development update channel; others were still being tried before wider integration. This entry separates those steps rather than treating every experiment as a finished desktop feature.

Text that grows with you

Settings now has a Text size choice from 100% to 200%, available in Appearance and Accessibility. It makes text larger without changing the display’s overall scale. Ecliptic’s own windows were adjusted to follow it, and Terminal’s sidebar grows with the text so its controls have room.

Virtual-machine checks exercised the setting at 150% and 200% across the bar, desktop labels, Settings, notifications and Terminal. Those checked surfaces updated live. There are still layout details to fix, including an app-grid update badge overlapping its icon at 200%. Third-party apps and every desktop surface have not all been checked at the larger sizes.

Mail received its own accessibility improvements: named controls for screen readers, a clearer Tab route through folders, conversations and the reader, and keyboard access to context menus. A separate fix stops the first click into a long message from jumping the reader to its bottom. Account status dots also make connection and sign-in problems easier to spot.

Screen-reader work began with an optional Orca setup and progressed to development packages that include it, switched off until needed. Settings has an Accessibility switch, and Super + Alt + S can turn speech on or off. Ecliptic also provides shortcuts for common tasks such as reading a window title or stopping speech, because Orca’s usual keyboard commands are not fully supported on this desktop.

The login screen can now speak its controls and messages, including a rejected password. Turning speech on there carries the choice into the session. With the screen reader enabled, a new accessible lock-screen path reads the password prompt and unlock feedback. While locked, notifications announce only that a notification arrived, leaving its text unspoken. The existing lock screen remains in use when speech is off during this trial.

These paths were checked in a VM with recorded sound: login, account selection, wrong and correct passwords, carrying the setting into the session, locking, and fallback to the existing lock screen after the new one was stopped. Real speakers, sleep while locked, multiple monitors and Braille still need their own checks. One Terminal flat-review check read its controls but not the terminal text, so app-level speech coverage remains incomplete.

Voice selection and speed, pitch and volume controls were also implemented and tried in a VM. Their rollout was still awaiting a decision about which voices to include. More natural speech is a direction being tested, rather than a promise about the voice on every installation.

Files you can recognize at a glance

Ecliptic Files gained a calmer layout and a coordinated family of file-type icons. Selection has a checkmark as well as color, and folder headings become more prominent when split panes need to be distinguished. Messages can be dismissed, and a folder error clears when browsing recovers.

Thumbnails now appear in grid and list views when a supported preview is available. They use the desktop’s shared thumbnail cache and optional preview service, with work done away from the window’s main thread. Unsupported or failed previews keep a file-type icon. A personal Show/Hide Thumbnails choice leaves the desktop’s separate preference alone.

The published Files build remained opt-in at the cutoff. A separate development branch also exercised making it the default browser on fresh and updated test installations, including other apps’ “Show in folder” actions. That migration was still awaiting merge and publication. Thunar continued to provide the existing desktop file-operation services; replacing those is a further step.

Mail with signatures, encryption and clear limits

Mail can now verify and create signed messages, and encrypt and decrypt messages using OpenPGP or S/MIME through GnuPG. The reader distinguishes a signature checking out from a key belonging to the expected address and an identity you have chosen to trust.

Sending encrypted mail requires suitable recipient keys. If one is missing, Mail asks whether to cancel or send unencrypted to everyone; it does not silently make that choice. Subjects remain visible. Encrypted drafts stay on this computer, and decrypted message text is kept in the reader’s memory rather than added to local search or exposed through Mail’s agent tools. Private keys need their own backup, separate from an ordinary Mail export.

The recorded checks used isolated keys and synthetic mail, including altered signatures, missing or expired keys, encrypted round trips and key recovery. Protected-key passphrase prompts and interoperability with real messages from other mail apps remain hands-on checks. Online S/MIME revocation-list checking and automatic key discovery are not included.

A clearer choice before ending work

Terminal now closes a known idle local shell without asking an unnecessary confirmation. Remote sessions, running jobs, explicit programs and uncertain activity still prompt. This is based on process and terminal state; a shell built-in that waits entirely inside the shell can still resemble an idle prompt.

Restart, shut down and log out now ask apps to close while the desktop is still visible, so an app’s save question can be answered. If something takes too long, a small window lists what remains and lets you cancel or continue. Continuing can lose unsaved work; cancelling does not reopen windows that already closed.

Transfers also became a more clearly separate workflow. Open it as its own app, choose from Terminal’s saved connections, and browse there. Its SFTP connections remain independent of running shells; the earlier Terminal launch and remote-folder reporting controls were removed.

Checks, and what comes next

The Files thumbnail release recorded 43 passing tests, with private preview-service checks and native window workflows. Terminal’s idle-close release recorded 77 passing tests. Mail’s encryption release recorded a passing 286-test suite, alongside its separate accessibility regressions. These were bounded checks with test files, services and keys, not proof of every device, provider or assistive workflow.

The next work includes real-device and screen-reader use, finishing the Files default-app migration, and checking installation and recovery paths more broadly. This entry records development through October 20; it is not a public OS release announcement.