Manjaro 26.1 Bian-May Preview Released — What’s New and Should You Try It?

The Manjaro team quietly dropped something worth paying attention to. On May 5, 2026, they released a public preview of Manjaro 26.1 “Bian-May” — the follow-up to Anh-Linh, which came out just four months ago in January 2026. For a distribution that moves at a measured pace, this preview is surprisingly feature-packed.

Here’s what’s actually changed and whether it’s worth your time to test it.

GNOME 50 — The Headliner

If you run the GNOME edition, this update alone makes Bian-May interesting. GNOME 50 shipped upstream in March 2026, and Manjaro has spent time polishing it before including it here.

The standout addition is proper parental controls. For the first time, GNOME lets parents set screen time limits, configure bedtime schedules, and automatically lock the screen when limits are hit. It sounds like a small thing until you realise this has never existed natively in GNOME before.

Remote desktop performance also gets a meaningful bump. Hardware acceleration via Vulkan and VA-API means remote sessions are noticeably smoother with less CPU load. NVIDIA users specifically will notice reduced stuttering thanks to targeted driver workarounds.

On the display side — VRR is more stable, fractional scaling works better, and you can now natively pick 125% or 150% in Display Settings instead of fighting with workarounds. HDR screen sharing rounds out the display improvements, letting recording software capture HDR content accurately.

KDE Plasma 6.6 — Power Users Will Appreciate This

The Plasma edition ships with Plasma 6.6, Frameworks 6.25, and KDE Gear 26.04 — a fully current stack.

The feature getting the most attention is the ability to save your current desktop configuration as a custom global theme. If you’ve spent hours building the perfect setup, you can now preserve and reuse it — including for day/night theme switching.

Accessibility improvements are also worth noting. Four colorblindness correction filters are now available in System Settings, and Spectacle can extract text from screenshots — useful for writing alt text or simply copying text from images.

Xfce 4.20 — Small Touches, Real Impact

Xfce 4.20 keeps things lightweight while adding genuinely practical features. Thunar now supports file colour highlighting — right-click, open properties, and tag files with custom colours. Recursive search is also in, which was a notable gap before.

The panel picks up pixel-based length configuration and a “keep above windows” toggle, giving you tighter control over your workspace layout.

Kernel 7.0 and One Thing to Watch

Kernel 7.0 is the default, bringing the latest hardware support. One caveat — there are known NTFS issues under Kernel 7.0 that the community has flagged. If you use NTFS drives regularly, use the 6.18 or 6.12 LTS kernel variants included in the ISO options. The issue is expected to be resolved in Kernel 7.1.

Worth Testing?

If you’re comfortable with preview builds, yes — the Manjaro team is actively looking for community feedback before the stable release. Just avoid running it as your only system on production hardware.

Based on this preview, Bian-May is shaping up to be one of the stronger Manjaro releases in the 26.x cycle. GNOME 50 alone brings enough real-world improvements to make the upgrade worthwhile for most users.

The stable release is on its way. This preview gives you an early look — and a chance to help make it better.

Originally published on Techrefreshing. Read the full detailed breakdown here.

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