Phosh

Phosh

Phosh is a lightweight desktop shell for Linux mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. It provides an intuitive interface optimised for touchscreens.
Phosh image
mobile touchscreen shell linux

Phosh: Lightweight Desktop Shell

Phosh is a lightweight desktop shell for Linux mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, with an intuitive touchscreen interface optimized for easy use

What is Phosh?

Phosh is a desktop shell designed specifically for Linux-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It aims to provide an intuitive and user-friendly graphical interface optimised for touchscreen inputs.

Some key features of Phosh include:

  • A mobile-centric user interface with large buttons and components ideal for touchscreens.
  • Gesture navigation - swipes, taps and holds to easily manuever through the interface.
  • A clean and distraction-free aesthetic reminiscient of mobile operating systems.
  • Seamless integration of desktop and mobile applications within the same environment.
  • Power efficiency from sharing low-level system components with the Linux phone stack.
  • An extensible architecture allowing customisation with different window managers.

Phosh is designed to work smoothly with Linux phone projects like Purism's Librem 5 smartphone. Its goal is to replicate the simplicity and elegance of mobile operating sytems while also enabling desktop-class productivity through Linux application support. The end result provides a refined Linux-based interface tuned for the unique affordances of handheld touchscreen devices.

Phosh Features

Features

  1. Wayland compositor optimized for mobile
  2. Gesture navigation
  3. On-screen keyboard
  4. App launcher
  5. Notifications
  6. Settings app
  7. Lock screen
  8. Basic theming support

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Lightweight and optimized for mobile devices

Touchscreen friendly interface

Smooth performance

Active development and community

Cons

Limited customization options

Lacks some desktop features

Relatively new project, may have bugs


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