COSMIC Store

COSMIC Store is the graphical application store built for the COSMIC desktop environment by System76. Written entirely in Rust on top of libcosmic, it provides a unified interface for discovering, installing, and managing applications — whether they come from Flathub, a configured Flatpak remote, or the system package manager. It is pre-alpha software, actively developed alongside the rest of the COSMIC DE suite, and ships by default on Pop!_OS.

Features

• Flatpak integration — Browse and install apps from Flathub and any other configured Flatpak remote; respects existing user and system Flatpak installations.
• System package management — Integrates with APT on Pop!_OS for native .deb package installation alongside Flatpak apps in the same interface.
• Relevance-ranked search — Type to search the full catalogue; results are scored and ranked for relevance across app names, summaries, and keywords.
• Rich app detail pages — Each app listing shows a full description, screenshots, current version, developer information, and version history.
• Manage installed apps — Update, remove, and inspect installed applications from a single view; update all pending apps in one click.
• Flathub statistics — Surfaces download counts and popularity data from Flathub to help surface well-used apps in browsing views.
• COSMIC theme integration — Automatically follows the COSMIC desktop dark/light theme and accent colour preference via libcosmic.
• All Rust, no Electron — The entire stack from package backend communication to UI rendering is native Rust with no web runtime overhead.

Installation

COSMIC Store is pre-alpha and does not yet have stable binary releases outside of Pop!_OS. The recommended ways to obtain it are:

Pop!_OS (ships by default)

COSMIC Store is included in Pop!_OS 24.04 and later as the default application store. No additional installation steps are needed.

Build from source (all Linux distributions)

# Install Rust via rustup if you haven't already
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Install system dependencies (Debian / Ubuntu)
sudo apt install just libxkbcommon-dev libflatpak-dev pkg-config

# Install system dependencies (Fedora)
sudo dnf install just libxkbcommon-devel flatpak-devel pkg-config

# Clone and build
git clone https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-store
cd cosmic-store
just build-release
just install

Arch Linux (AUR)

paru -S cosmic-store-git

Nix / NixOS

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.cosmic-store

Note: As pre-alpha software, the build dependencies and process may change between commits. Check the repository README for the most up-to-date instructions.

Quick Start

After launching COSMIC Store, you are presented with a browsable home view surfacing featured and popular applications. A few things worth knowing out of the box:

# Search for an application
# Type its name into the search bar at the top of the window

# Install a Flatpak app
# 1. Search for or browse to the app
# 2. Open its detail page
# 3. Click Install — COSMIC Store handles the rest, including
#    prompting for authentication if required

# Update all installed apps
# Navigate to the Installed view and click Update All

# Remove an installed app
# Open the app's detail page and click Remove

Flatpak remotes (such as Flathub) must be configured on your system before COSMIC Store can browse them. On a fresh non-Pop!_OS install, add Flathub first:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub \
    https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

COSMIC Store vs Other Linux App Stores

If you are not using the COSMIC desktop and want a stable graphical app store today, GNOME Software and Discover are the mature alternatives for GNOME and KDE respectively.