Finding Snap Apps for Install
Finding Snap Apps for Install

A shiny new version of snapd, the service that powers Canonical’s ‘Snap’ packaging format, is now available.

If you’re busy using Snappy then much of what’s new will be of interest, including new commands to ‘buy’, ‘find –private’, ‘disable’ and ‘revert’.

An overview of the new commands:

  • snap find --private lets you see snaps that have been shared with you privately
  • snap buy offers you a choice of payment backends for non-free snaps
  • snap disable allows you to disable specific snaps
  • snap revert allows you to revert a snap to its previous installed version
  • While snap refresh command now works with snaps installed in devmode

All useful for Snap addicts.

Other changes in Snapd 2.11 include

  • Graceful handling of broken snaps using snap try command
  • Default confinement policy now includes access to /usr/bin/locale
  • New ‘hardware-observe’ interface to let snaps read hardware info

Like what you hear? Snapd 2.11 is rolling out to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users right now through Software Updater.

If you (somehow) don’t have it installed just open a new Terminal and run:

sudo apt install snapd

A growing selection of applications are being made available in the new packaging format, with LibreOffice 5.2, VLC and Telegram among them.