Omarchy 4.5 RC1 is out for testing, with x86 and first ARM ISOs
The first feature release since Quattro can be installed today from the RC channel or a fresh ISO, with built-in Omapager notifications and a Quake-style console among the additions.
Image: Omarchy v4.5.0-rc1 release notes (GitHub)
Omarchy 4.5 is ready for testing. Ryan Hughes published v4.5.0-rc1 as a GitHub prerelease on October 20, 2026, describing it as “the release candidate for Omarchy 4.5, the first feature release since Quattro.” The official @omarchy account followed up on X on October 21: “Absolutely packed with features and improvements. Please help us test it!”
The release notes open with a clear warning: “This is a release candidate, not a final release. Expect bugs, rough edges, and the occasional thing that breaks outright. Run it on a test machine, or make sure you have a working backup (or a snapshot you know how to roll back to) before you upgrade a machine you depend on.” To try it on an existing install, switch to Update > Channel > RC, then run Update > Omarchy. For a fresh machine, there’s an x86_64 ISO and an aarch64 ISO, with SHA256 checksums in the notes.
That second download is a first. Until now, according to the PR that changed it, Omarchy’s release script only built and published x86_64, and aarch64 images only existed as nightly edge builds. omarchy-iso PR #298, merged on October 20, taught it to release an aarch64 ISO beside the x86_64 one, and 4.5 RC1 is the first release to ship both. The release notes tie ARM support to NVIDIA N1x laptops like the ASUS ProArt P14 and Dell XPS 16, and to Snapdragon X laptops like the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and ThinkPad T14s. It is not a Mac installer: Omarchy Mac’s shared hardware and desktop support now lives in Omarchy itself, but Apple Silicon keeps its boot setup in the Omarchy Mac packages.
The biggest piece that hadn’t been part of Omarchy itself until this week is the new notification system. Ryan Hughes merged PR #15932 on October 20, 53 commits that replace Omarchy’s notification engine with Omapager and retire it as a separate plugin. Notifications now stack by sender, and you can snooze them, turn on Do Not Disturb and scroll back through your history. Action buttons, verification codes and links work right from the card, cards follow your theme, and, according to the PR, verification codes are only ever stored redacted.
A few more additions get their first spotlight in the RC notes:
Super + Gravedrops a centered, dimmed Quake-style terminal console over the desktop, which the notes call “a handy home for a terminal agent.”- Backgrounds can be videos on the desktop and lock screen, now played by OWE.
- A new Trigger > Appearance menu gathers the switches that change how the desktop looks, like the menu bar, window gaps and animations.
Super + Lcycles a workspace between dwindle tiling, scrolling and floating, andSuper + Mminimizes a window to the dock.
The rest of the RC brings together features we’ve covered as they landed: 50 languages, per-monitor workspaces, the desktop mode with a dock, theme intros, the Elsewhen world clock, a one-second boot menu, NVIDIA N1x support, Snapdragon video decoding, better CJK input, Kimi Code, smoother bar dragging, Super + Shift + S screenshots, Caps Lock back to normal and Signed for PDF signing. Everything else is in the full changelog since v4.0.6.
The team is clearly proud of it. “This is like three releases in one!” DHH wrote on X on October 21, singling out the internationalization work: “Omarchy in Chinese, Japanese, and 48 other languages, complete with input methods to match.” Ryan Hughes, who calls it “Omarchy 4.5 Quattro RS”, asked testers to “put it through its paces and send over those PRs so we can get this shipped!”
No date has been given for the final 4.5 release. For now, the way to speed it up is to install the RC on a spare machine and report what breaks on GitHub.
Source: https://github.com/omacom/omarchy/releases/tag/v4.5.0-rc1
