Linux Mint is working on a redesigned screensaver and lock screen for the Cinnamon desktop. Based on our first look, it’s a solid improvement.
If the word “screensaver” conjures flying star fields or photo slideshows, that’s fair, but in Cinnamon it also acts as the ‘screen locker’. In 2026, ‘saving’ the screen is less of a concern than ‘locking’ it, but many users enjoy seeing a pretty ‘idle’ display.
Cinnamon’s new lock screen will, based on designs shared by Linux Mint, convey more information without you needing to unlock. Battery level, time and date, media player controls and unread notifications counts are shown.
Plus, the screen will be able to let you toggle the on-screen keyboard, use your fingerprint to unlock and invoke the user switcher.
Why the revamp?
Until now, Cinnamon’s screen locking was handled by a separate package, cinnamon-screensaver, running alongside Cinnamon as its own process. The new approach bakes things in to Cinnamon itself, using the same UI toolkit and widgets as the rest of the desktop does.
It also brings support for Wayland. Linux Mint defaults to Xorg/X11, but Cinnamon’s Wayland session is improving. While it doesn’t plan to rush a decision on a switch, Linux Mint’s Clement Lefebvre “wants to have the option on the table”.
Other benefits include bolstering visual finesse since a native approach will resolve the (slightly) janky transition between desktop and Lock Screen. A clean start also relieves developers of needing to unpick an unnecessarily complex codebase inherited from the GNOME 2 era.
“Screensavers are very important”, Clem says in a blog post. “They need to look good, they need to work well, and they cannot under any circumstance fail to protect the user’s privacy.”
Because of the stated ‘importance’, the new native screen lock/saver will undergo thorough testing in both Xorg and Wayland sessions to make sure no niche edge-cases emerge that leave screen contents accessible.
Out of an abundance of caution, the next Cinnamon release will, says Clem, “keep the exact same configuration options, introduce the new screensaver and keep compatibility as a fallback with the older one”.
The release after? That’ll go all-in on the new version.
You can expect to wake up your device and the new screensaver in Linux Mint 23. That is due for release later this year based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. It’ll also appear in any Linux distribution that packages the next Cinnamon desktop release.
Linux Mint users: what do you think of the designs above?