The lightweight Qt desktop environment developed by the LXQt project was officially released as version 2.4 on April 20, 2026, bringing improvements in many aspects such as Wayland adaptation, consistent experience, and terminal and panel plug-ins. This version, together with the recently released GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6, etc., constitutes the current batch of newer open source desktop updates.
In terms of Wayland support, LXQt 2.4 has been corrected for the display of desktop icons in multi-screen desktop environments, making the visibility of desktop items more consistent in multi-monitor scenarios. At the same time, LXQt Sessions now manages the settings of X11 and Wayland sessions separately, making it easier for users to adjust the configurations in different session environments. Under Wayland, LXQt also supports opening the main menu by adding a shortcut to "lxqt-qdbus openmenu" in the synthesizer settings, providing a new calling method for those who do not have traditional "right-click menu" usage habits.
In terms of power management, LXQt 2.4 introduces independent display screen-off timeout settings for power supply (AC) and battery power supply, allowing notebooks and other devices to adopt different energy-saving strategies in different power supply states. The developers also cleaned up a batch of options considered “useless” to reduce interface noise and simplify the configuration experience.
The LXQt panel has also been enhanced in this update, and its volume plug-in now supports a horizontal layout to better fit into common landscape panel designs. This helps improve the usability and look and feel of the panel assembly while maintaining lightweight.
The terminal emulator QTerminal has received a number of improvements in version 2.4, including optimization of custom tab name behavior, making renaming and managing tabs more in line with user expectations. The "Nord" theme has been added to the interface theme, providing new visual options for users who prefer cool colors and high-contrast interfaces. The search function can now highlight all matching results when searching, and with the improved highlighting code, positioning and reading in long output are more efficient.
In terms of portal integration, xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt adds a new access portal based on org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Access to achieve closer cooperation with the desktop portal framework and lay the foundation for scenarios such as sandbox applications requesting permissions. In addition, this release also contains several minor fixes and other improvements. Details can be found in the project release announcement and GitHub version page:
https://github.com/lxqt/lxqt/releases/tag/2.4.0