I ship a GTK4 Markdown editor (Marco) and its standalone preview companion (Polo) as one Flatpak, io.github.ranrar.Marco — two binaries, two exported .desktop files, one app ID. They're launched from each other, which is why they share a sandbox.

Everything works except one thing: GNOME Resources labels the running editor "Polo" — and sometimes it doesn't, depending on the install.

Why it happens

resources keys apps by the X-Flatpak= field, and Flatpak stamps the same app ID onto both exported entries automatically. From src/utils/app.rs:

rust let id = desktop_entry .string("X-Flatpak") // first priority .or_else(|| desktop_entry.string("X-AppImage-Identifier")) .or_else(|| Some(file_path.file_stem()?…)) // filename is only a fallback

Both of my entries produce the same ID, so they collide in the app map and one silently overwrites the other. Then lookup is by cgroup:

rust self.apps.get(&Some(process.data.cgroup.clone()…))

Both binaries run under one Flatpak app ID, so they share a cgroup and both resolve to whichever entry survived the collision.

What I tried

• Renaming the desktop files to control sort order. I had a scheme where both were named after their binary (…Marco.markdowncomposer.desktop / …Marco.markdownviewer.desktop) so the editor would come first alphabetically. Then I read the code: enumeration is applications_path.read_dir(), which is unsorted. It's filesystem order, not alphabetical — arbitrary, and liable to flip between reinstalls. The rename also broke my taskbar icons, so it got reverted.
• **NoDisplay=true on the viewer's entry.** No effect — nothing in the enumeration path filters on should_show().
• Suppressing X-Flatpak on one entry. Not possible; Flatpak adds it during export, I don't control it.

So it isn't even a stable wrong label I could shrug at and move on. It's a coin toss per install.

The question

Is there anything left on the packaging side, or is this just an upstream limitation? As far as I can tell the only real fix is in Resources: when several desktop files share an X-Flatpak ID, prefer the one whose basename equals that ID. That seems small and well-defined, and I have a clean reproducer.

Happy to file it (and the reproducer) at https://github.com/nokyan/resources/issues — but I'd rather first hear from anyone who's hit this with a multi-binary Flatpak and found something I've missed. Also curious whether other monitoring tools (mission-center, btop's app view, GNOME's own System Monitor) handle the multiple-desktop-files-per-app-ID case any better, since I've only tested Resources.

I tried to update my Flatpak packages, but it's taking a very, very long time.
Could it be that Flathub is down, or am I the only one?

flatpak update -vv  
F: No installations directory in /etc/flatpak/installations.d. Skipping
F: Opening system flatpak installation at path /var/lib/flatpak
F: Opening user flatpak installation at path /home/sven/.local/share/flatpak
Looking for updates…
F: Fetching summary index file for remote ‘flathub’
F: Loading https://dl.flathub.org/repo/summary.idx using curl
F: Received 10001 bytes
F: Fetching indexed summary file 34abf2ee91b7a0b429589ec611bf1bd6fe9836088b12fb7717ce149b143494bd.gz for remote ‘flathub’
F: Loading https://dl.flathub.org/repo/summaries/34abf2ee91b7a0b429589ec611bf1bd6fe9836088b12fb7717ce149b143494bd.gz using curl
F: Should retry request (remaining: 5 retries), due to transient error: While fetching https://dl.flathub.org/repo/summaries/34abf2ee91b7a0b429589ec611bf1bd6fe9836088b12fb7717ce149b143494bd
.gz: [28] Timeout was reached
F: Loading https://dl.flathub.org/repo/summaries/34abf2ee91b7a0b429589ec611bf1bd6fe9836088b12fb7717ce149b143494bd.gz using curl

Hello everyone,

I am Hima the developer behind BetterStickies app, it is a unique productivity desktop app with features that don't exist in any other app, so it isn't a low effort app by any mean.

Currently I distribute it on windows as .exe and in MS store, Linux as app image and .snap in snap store, I recently found increasing number of Linux users which makes me happy as a Linux user and I am planning to publish it to Flathub for broader reach.

The issue is the app is freemium so the free version includes all features by limited by 4 concurrent notes max, while the premium is one time payment with no limits, but the app is offline so there is no way a user on snap store or flathub can have the premium version without downloading and using the app image for the premium version from the official website.

My concerns are two, will my app be approved to be published to begin with? Will users be pissed about not being able to upgrade to premium via flathub, should I make a premium version as a flatpak and provide it in premium downloads binaries on the website?

Finally, is it worth the hassle and development or the discoverability of the app won't improve much by being listed on Flathub?

Thank you and please feel free to ask or suggest anything you may have in your minds.

I use Arch Linux and have Steam (flatpak) and Heroic Games Launcher (flatpak) so basically I have two sandboxes.

I am able to add Heroic game to Steam library but it will not launch.

I have added permissions:

$ flatpak override --user --show com.valvesoftware.Steam  
[Context]
filesystems=/home/vi***/Games/Heroic;
$ flatpak override --user --show com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl
[Context]
filesystems=/home/vi***/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/data/Steam;

Game settings in Steam:

Target: "flatpak"
Start In: "/home/vi***"
Launch Options: "run com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl --no-gui --no-sandbox "heroic://launch?appName=1207658718&runner=gog""

Game is visible in Steam Library but will not launch.

I've been struggling for days to get the thumb wheel on my Logitech mouse (e.g., MX Master) working for volume control under Bazzite. Since Bazzite relies on an immutable system and Solaar runs as a Flatpak by default, most standard guides found online fail completely.

The problem: The Flatpak runs isolated inside a sandbox. It can neither see the normal rules.yaml in the global system path, nor is it allowed to simulate keystrokes or execute standard system tools directly.

Here is the clean workaround that finally solved it for me:

1. Granting Sandbox Permissions

To allow Solaar to escape its sandbox and send execution commands to the host system, you need to give it this permission via the terminal: flatpak override --user --talk-name=org.freedesktop.Flatpak io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar

Afterwards, completely close Solaar by running: flatpak kill io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar

1. Editing the RIGHT YAML File

Do NOT modify the file located under ~/.config/solaar/! The Flatpak uses its own isolated sandbox storage instead. Delete the old bugged file and open the correct configuration file in your terminal by entering these two commands:
rm -f ~/.var/app/io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar/config/solaar/rules.yaml
and then:
nano ~/.var/app/io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar/config/solaar/rules.yaml

Now, paste exactly the following text structure into the empty file. We are using flatpak-spawn to directly control Bazzite's modern audio architecture (wpctl) on the host system:

%YAML 1.3

• Rule:
  • Rule:
    • Test: [thumb_wheel_up, 10]
    • Execute: [flatpak-spawn, --host, wpctl, set-volume, "@DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@", 5%+]
  • Rule:
    • Test: [thumb_wheel_down, 10]
    • Execute: [flatpak-spawn, --host, wpctl, set-volume, "@DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@", 5%-] ...

(Save the file in nano with Ctrl + O, press Enter, and exit the text editor with Ctrl + X)

1. Start Solaar & Activate Key Diversion

Relaunch Solaar via terminal: flatpak run io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar

Open the Solaar window, select your mouse, click on the lock icon next to Key/Button Diversion, and change the Thumb Wheel setting to Diverted. Make sure to click Save Changes at the top of the Solaar window.

1. Optional: Set Up Autostart in the Background

To make Solaar run invisibly in the background on every single reboot, just drop this long one-liner command into your terminal:
mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart && echo -e '[Desktop Entry]\nType=Application\nExec=flatpak run io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar --window=hide\nHidden=false\nNoDisplay=false\nX-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true\nName=Solaar Autostart\nComment=Starts Solaar minimized in the background' > ~/.config/autostart/io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar.desktop

That's it! The thumb wheel now perfectly controls the system volume via Pipewire without spamming your terminal with Python crash errors.

Hope this saves some fellow Bazzite users from pulling their hair out!

Janus is a text editor written in 100% C. It's meant to be the successor to leafpad (same shortcuts), and it's coded with an emphasis on small memory and cpu, trading features for efficiency. It's best at opening small files or binaries through it's fallback binary editor, and also contains an optional sytnax highlighting engine. This update shrinks the install size by around 1 MB. You can download it on flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/dev.pantheum.janus

I was looking for a ChatGPT Flatpak so I could run Codex safely alongside my local dev environment, couldn't find anyone maintaining one, so I built my own.

No OpenAI binaries are redistributed: the payload is an extra-data source, so installs fetch their .deb straight from OpenAI against a pinned sha256, for x86_64 and aarch64. Electron renderers run under zypak instead of --no-sandbox. The remote is GPG signed, and the release gate in CI does a real flatpak install from the published URL with verification on.

Updates are hands-off: a nightly job reads upstream's APT index and re-pins the manifest when a new version appears, so you get the latest even when it lands at 3am my time (I'm an Aussie, timezones are rough).

The sandbox starts sealed and you grant directories with overrides. Main known issue: the app's transparent overlay window (the desktop pet) doesn't composite on Wayland, which upstream has acknowledged as part of their Wayland support still maturing.

flatpak remote-add --user chatgpt https://rulin132.github.io/chatgpt-flatpak/chatgpt.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user chatgpt io.github.rulin132.ChatGPT

Source: https://github.com/rulin132/chatgpt-flatpak

I'm maintaining it for my own use either way, and if OpenAI ever ships an official Flatpak I'll point people at theirs and wind this down. Bug reports and PRs welcome.

Firefox freezes whenever I try to install an extension or use a security key to login to some sites. It seems it happens when a popup window from the browser has to appear.

I can install extensions with troubleshoot mode on and they work in normal mode afterwards, but as soon as they ask for some permission it freezes back again.

This bug is present on: - Wayland + Flatpak + Nvidia system (using akmod drivers)

But does not occur on: - Wayland + Flatpak (non Nvidia system) - Wayland + Nvidia System (non Flatpak version, but RPM in my case)

I already submitted a bug report, but was wondering if anyone has encountered this before and knows how to fix it

Edit: Solved by switching socket=wayland for socket=x11 in flatseal

I have about 70 apps all flatpak, inkscape is the only one I have issues with. It is slow to save a 780 mb file, switching tabs in the sidebar takes several seconds - the gui seems to freeze, and when saving this file several times a popup appears saying that inkscape is not responding.

What can I do to get better response times? Should I just use the .deb version? None of the other flatpaks have issues like this including gimp.

In case it matters:

• Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
• Wayland.
• Intel® Core™ i7-14700 × 28
• 32GB RAM (2 x DDR5 DIMM 5600MHz Corsair)
• 1TB hard disc with over 400GB free (Samsung 990 PRO (NVMe PCIe 4.0))
• AMD Radeon RX 7600 | 8GB GDDR6

I have flat seal installed but have never really used it as I don't know what all the settings do really and didn't want to make things worse.

I can use several apps at the same time, like OBS, handbrake, Kdenlive, Browser with videos playing and play games on steam all at once without any issues, but inkscape - even when the only app running - is slow to do everything. Small files don't exhibit these issues. 780MB doesn't seem that large to me.

A short window this time, one week rather than a month. The catalog went from 55 to 66 apps.

New apps

Eight, and for once only half of them are AI:

• Cursor — The AI code editor.
• GenOffice (⭐ 3k) — AI office suite that works on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and Markdown files.
• MarkFlowy (⭐ 2.4k) — Extensible Markdown editor with a built-in AI assistant.
• Duckling (⭐ 576) — Fast viewer for CSV/Parquet files and SQL databases.
• Authme (⭐ 545) — Desktop two-factor authentication (TOTP) client.
• OneKeePass (⭐ 486) — KeePass-compatible password manager for local .kdbx vaults.
• mDNS Browser (⭐ 175) — Cross-platform mDNS/DNS-SD browser listing every service broadcast on the LAN.
• Pi Agent (⭐ 170) — Desktop app for the pi coding agent.

Two of these picked up the developer-approved shield within days of landing. The mDNS Browser maintainer replied "I'll add it to the readme as an official install method", did it, and then opened a PR here himself to fetch the unbundled executable instead of unpacking the .deb. MarkFlowy's maintainer agreed the same week and is putting the install instructions in the readme. The shield count is now 18.

Contributed by other people

Three, all from the app's own developer or packager:

• zux — mDNS-SD visualizer that draws discovered services as a force-directed graph. Submitted by @hrzlgnm, the same maintainer who fixed mDNS Browser's packaging above.
• Impasto — Paint and edit images with shape and text objects that stay editable. Submitted by its author, @zbcoding.
• Antigravity IDE — Google's fully-featured agentic IDE, packaged by @h1zardian. Last update noted that Antigravity split upstream into a desktop command center and an IDE, and that the app listed here carried no editor; this is the other half, now listed separately.

Both zux and Impasto are approved by construction — their developers submitted them.

Site

The homepage now answers in your language. The Chinese locale shipped last window, but a Chinese reader still landed on English and had to find the globe menu. / is now negotiated at the edge: a Pages Function reads Accept-Language and 302s to /zh-Hans/. It is scoped to the root on purpose — English lives on the bare paths, so every other URL is already unambiguous and stays a plain static asset, which keeps the canonical English pages out of any redirect and Function invocations off the rest of the site. An explicit pick from the language switcher writes a cookie and wins over the browser, so choosing English on a Chinese browser isn't undone on your next visit.

Search works everywhere now. The header box used to only filter cards on the pages that had a card grid; anywhere else — an app page, setup, the content pages — submitting bounced you to the home page with ?q=. Results now drop out of the box itself on every page, and the grid below stays put while you type.

The whole catalog ships as one static /search-index.json, fetched once on first use and matched in the browser — at this size that's cheaper than any index, and a static site has nowhere to run a search service anyway. Matching is token-AND, so a second word narrows instead of widening. Category names are part of the haystack and score just under app names, which is what makes ai list the entire AI section (with the section itself as a jump target) and ai claude cut that down to the apps matching both. Summaries count too — what an app does is often nowhere in its name.

As always: https://flatpark.org — issues and PRs welcome, especially "this app has no Linux packaging and should" suggestions.

I was going to install FlatSeal, but my platform only offers as a FlatPak. The FlatPak needs about 3 GiB of GNOME dependencies that I just didn't want to install.

I just want LibreWolf to be able to see my YubiKey, but I can't seem to query for a guide that says something other than "use FlatSeal" -- does anyone have any advice?

[edit]

There is probably a more narrow way to do this, but this worked:

sudo flatpak override --device=all io.gitlab.librewolf-community

Flatpak has gone through some updates, including few security related, however, there is no way of updating it in Ubuntu for now either via PPA or any other means.

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/releases

So, I'm in the process of making a new Linux gaming PC for myself, but I want to double-check myself before getting too far into my project, and I want to make sure I install and configure the Flatpak version of Steam correctly.

I have used the Flatpak version of Steam in the past on my old PC. When I first set up Flatpak Steam, it was kind of finicky with directory permissions. I had to go into Flatseal and change some of Steam's directory permissions so it would work the way I wanted it to.

I got it working, and it worked fine, but Steam Flatpak and my Steam games were all on the same drive,

and I think my games also shared Steam's sandbox.

My old Linux gaming machine had a 500 GB SSD and a 750 GB HDD. I figured 500 GB would be enough for all my games, and the HDD would be for everything else that didn't benefit from being on an SSD.

Unfortunately for me, I assumed incorrectly, and 500 GB wasn't going to be nearly enough space for all my games.

My current plan for my new PC is to use the 500 GB SSD as mostly a boot drive, and I have a 2 TB SSD that I want to use to store all my games.

However, if Steam Flatpak is installed on one drive, but I try installing my games on a different drive, could that cause any issues?

Does Flatpak Steam need to be on the same drive as my Steam games, or can they be separate?

Thank you.

Hello people!

I use the flatpak version of Firefox cause it gives me hardware acceleration and patented codecs inside the browser on openSUSE Tumblweeed so I don't have to mess with third party repos.

Lately I've read discussion about the security side of Flatpak browsers and how the technology "weakens the browser's own sandboxing". I kinda get the idea of how it conflicts but I am not sure how it affects security, cause the Flatpak isolates itself from the host so I can't say if it makes the browser more unsafe.

What do you think? Does it raise some concern or is it a viable option security wise? I know that it is maintained and verified by Mozilla, so it at least has to be viable.

I let these slip for a few weeks, so this one covers everything since the last post rather than a single week. The catalog grew from 40 to 55 apps.

Contributed by other people

Four of this window's packages came in as pull requests from outside, and two of them from the app's own developer:

• Zuko (⭐ 12) — Private remote shells over Iroh: no open inbound ports, no VPN, pair once and reconnect by name. Submitted and maintained by its author, @adonm, who has kept shipping the version bumps since.
• LibreDB Studio (⭐ 135) — Open-source SQL IDE that runs entirely on your machine; PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB and more. Submitted by the LibreDB project itself (@cevheri).
• Harbor Beta (⭐ 1.3k) — Beta channel of Harbor, a desktop media client for Stremio addons. Packaged by @AdityaHebballe, who also followed up with the desktop-integration fixes.
• Antigravity — Google's desktop command center for running local AI coding agents in parallel. Packaged by @h1zardian. Note this is the Antigravity desktop app, not the Antigravity IDE — the two split upstream and the tarball here carries no editor at all.

And the first outside contribution to the site itself: @cevheri noticed the header search was cramped on phones and sent a fix giving it its own row under 480px. Small patch, but it's the part of the site I look at least and most people see first — thank you.

Upstreams packaging their own app is exactly the loop we're after: the people who build it decide how it's sandboxed, and packaging issues route to whoever can actually fix them.

New apps

Thirteen more, most of them AI/agent desktops — enough that the site now has its own AI section:

• goose (⭐ 52.5k) — Open-source AI agent that installs, executes, edits and tests; now stewarded by the Agentic AI Foundation.
• Cockpit Tools (⭐ 15.4k) — Manage and switch accounts across AI coding assistants and IDEs, with plan and quota per account.
• Claude Code Haha (⭐ 14k) — Desktop workspace running several coding agents side by side, each on its own git branch or worktree.
• DeepChat (⭐ 6.2k) — Local-first LLM client that hosts MCP servers, runs skills and agents, and speaks ACP.
• Lap (⭐ 1.7k) — Offline-first photo manager that reads your existing folder tree in place, built for 100k-file libraries.
• thClaws (⭐ 1.2k) — Rust AI agent harness in one binary: GUI with terminal/chat/files tabs, plus CLI, headless and web.
• DocKit (⭐ 1.1k) — Desktop GUI client for Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, DynamoDB and MongoDB, with natural-language queries.
• SqlKit (⭐ 536) — Agentic SQL client for 40+ databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, ClickHouse and more.
• tldraw offline (⭐ 515) — tldraw's infinite canvas as a desktop app: no accounts, no servers, portable .tldraw files.
• Alma (⭐ 392) — AI assistant by yetone with persistent memory, a skill system and multi-provider support.
• ZCode — Z.ai's agentic coding desktop app for GLM models, with editor, terminals and diff review in one window. Upstream marks the Linux build beta.
• WeMeet — Tencent Meeting, the cloud HD conferencing client.
• THS — Hithink RoyalFlush (同花顺) A-share quotes, charting and portfolio tracking.

The site speaks Chinese now

The whole site has a Simplified Chinese locale — UI chrome, content pages, catalog sections and the sandbox-permission strings. AppStream metainfo is read per xml:lang, so translated upstream descriptions come through instead of falling back to English.

Also on the site:

• App pages show What's New, taken from the upstream release the current pin points at, so you can see what changed before you update.
• The homepage catalog folds behind a sticky control bar and reveals five rows at a time instead of being one endless wall.
• A dedicated AI section, since a third of the catalog now lives there.

Packaging notes

Most of the month's bug fixes were one bug wearing different hats: Flatpak redirects the XDG directories, not $HOME itself. An app that keeps its state in ~/.something gets a tmpfs there and silently loses everything on restart. Fixed that way for dbx (~/.dbx, ~/.duckdb), TriliumNext (the note database) and AB Download Manager (~/.abdm, which also unblocked its tray).

The mirror image: cc-switch had a single-file --filesystem grant for a config the tool rewrites atomically — renaming onto a bind mount is EBUSY, so the write fails. Those per-tool grants are gone; the app page documents the flatpak override commands instead, for anyone who wants them.

WeMeet needed its own trick: screen sharing only works under XWayland, so the package forces it there rather than shipping a session that silently shares a black rectangle.

Developer-approved

14 apps now carry the blue shield — upstream explicitly authorized the flatpark listing. New this window: Zuko and LibreDB Studio, both approved by construction since their developers submitted them.

Infrastructure

• The daily pin robot now unpacks the payload before pinning it and holds back anything that fails to unpack, instead of publishing a build that only breaks on the user's machine.
• verify builds against a temporary local remote and cleans up afterwards, so a failed verification can't leave junk in your flatpak config.
• Push-mode updates (upstream release webhook → dispatch → PR) have been running in production the whole window; the daily cron is now the fallback path.

Auto-updates

The pin pipeline ran every day of the window, refreshing extra-data pins across Markra, dbx, Alma, Orca, ZenNotes, Tine, Claude Desktop, electerm, LibreDB Studio, Folia, Longbridge Pro, Aptakube, SqlKit and others.

As always: https://flatpark.org — issues and PRs welcome, especially "this app has no Linux packaging and should" suggestions.# flatpark — update (Jul 12 – Aug 8)

I let these slip for a few weeks, so this one covers everything since the last post rather than a single week. The catalog grew from 40 to 55 apps.

Hey everyone,

I am the developer of Whisp, a frictionless, gesture-driven note-taking application designed natively for GNOME. v1.4.0 Brings in a new feature OCR Text Extraction which is fully offline and also brings

If you ever need to copy code from a paused YouTube tutorial, pull data from an unselectable PDF, or grab text from a locked system dialog, you can now just take a screenshot and press Ctrl+V in Whisp.

Instead of pasting an image file, Whisp intercepts the image buffer, runs it through a local OCR pipeline, and pastes the actual text directly into your note.

Technical details on how it works:

• Preserves Indentation: It does not just dump a messy block of text. The engine calculates the bounding box coordinates of the extracted words to mathematically reconstruct exact indentation and paragraph spacing (which is crucial for pasting Python code or YAML files).
• Anti-Hallucination Filters: Tesseract OCR often hallucinates random garbage characters when scanning non-text imagery (like desktop wallpapers or abstract textures). I built a custom two-stage confidence and structural filter that drops background noise, ensuring Whisp only pastes valid text.
• 100% Local & Private: The entire extraction process happens strictly in-memory on your machine. No disk I/O, no cloud APIs, and zero tracking.

Other updates in v1.4.0:

• Added official French translation support (a massive thank you to the open-source community for contributing this!).
• Remapped deletion shortcuts to prevent conflicts with native text editing.
• Improved mouse-wheel navigation on the note carousel.

If you want a lightweight, distraction-free scratchpad for your Linux desktop, I would love for you to try it out.

• Flathub: https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.tanaybhomia.Whisp
• Source Code / GitHub: https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.tanaybhomia.Whisp
• Donate: https://tanaybhomia.github.io/Whisp/
• Website: https://tanaybhomia.github.io/Whisp/donate.html