In the monthly newsletter for February 2026, Linux Mint creator Clement Lefebvre talks about the new screensaver for the Cinnamon desktop environment that will be implemented in future Linux Mint releases.
Work on the new Cinnamon screensaver kicked off last month, and it looks like it’s already prepared for the upcoming Linux Mint 23 release, due out in July-August 2026 based on Canonical’s upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) long-term supported operating system series.
In current Linux Mint releases, the Cinnamon screensaver is a standalone application written in Python and C, and using the GTK toolkit. The thing is that the current screensaver implementation only works in the Cinnamon X11 session, not in the Wayland one, which is currently still experimental in Linux Mint 22.3.
Since the Linux Mint devs will most likely promote the Wayland session to stable in future Linux Mint releases, they need to ensure all elements are working properly, just like in the X11 session. Therefore, they wrote a new, Wayland-native screensaver for the Cinnamon desktop environment that’s being built in.
In the monthly newsletter for February 2026, Linux Mint creator Clement Lefebvre talks about the new screensaver for the Cinnamon desktop environment that will be implemented in future Linux Mint releases.
Work on the new Cinnamon screensaver kicked off last month, and it looks like it’s already prepared for the upcoming Linux Mint 23 release, due out in July-August 2026 based on Canonical’s upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) long-term supported operating system series.
In current Linux Mint releases, the Cinnamon screensaver is a standalone application written in Python and C, and using the GTK toolkit. The thing is that the current screensaver implementation only works in the Cinnamon X11 session, not in the Wayland one, which is currently still experimental in Linux Mint 22.3.
Since the Linux Mint devs will most likely promote the Wayland session to stable in future Linux Mint releases, they need to ensure all elements are working properly, just like in the X11 session. Therefore, they wrote a new, Wayland-native screensaver for the Cinnamon desktop environment that’s being built in.
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“The new screensaver isn’t a separate process. It’s Cinnamon itself handling things directly, locking the screen natively with its own toolkit and widgets,” said Clement Lefebvre. “The biggest gain, of course, is the full compatibility with Wayland. Whether or not we want to default to Wayland in the future is a different topic, but we certainly want to have the option on the table.”
As you can see from the screenshot above, courtesy of Linux Mint developer Joseph Mccullar, the new Cinnamon screensaver promises a native look and smooth animation, while keeping compatibility as a fallback with the older one, which will be removed in a future Linux Mint release later this year.
As one would expect, the new Linux Mint screensaver will show critical information to the user, such as battery level on laptops, multimedia controls, while also allowing access to the on-screen keyboard, keyboard layout, accessibility controls, and fingerprint reader, where available.
Apart from the Wayland-native screensaver, the upcoming Linux Mint 23 release promises a new Users page in the Administration Tool (mintsysadm) for user administration and account details, as well as a Sensors page in the System Reports tool to see all the sensors detected on the computer.
Image credits: Joseph Mccullar
Source: https://9to5linux.com/linux-mint-devs-prep-wayland-native-cinnamon-screensaver-for-linux-mint-23