Summary
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CachyOS April 2026 allows you to use fingerprint scanners for sudo, increasing convenient superuser security.
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Octopi replaced by Shelly for AUR, Flathub and AppImages GUI installations: Easier setup for new users.
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You can update your CachyOS installation by running ‘sudo pacman -Syu’ in the terminal.
2026 has been a big year for CachyOS and we’re only a quarter of the way there. At the beginning of the year, we saw CachyOS dethrones Arch Linux as the top distro reportedly on ProtonDB, ending a year-long reign and showing a pattern of people checking out CachyOS for their gaming needs.
Now, the April version of CachyOS has been released and one of its key features is better sudo protection. Now, if you really want to prevent people from running superuser commands on your system, you can lock it behind a fingerprint scanner for an extra layer of security.
CachyOS April 2026 update makes sudo even more secure
Also, a change from Octopi to Shelly
Beyond the CachyOS websiteThe team details everything we can expect from the April 2026 update. There’s a smorgasbord of changes with this month’s update, including the replacement of Octopi with Shelly. Shelly adds a GUI for installing packages from sources like AUR, Flathub, and even AppImages, which should make setting up a PC much easier for people unfamiliar with Arch Linux. Additionally, CachyOS will now enable os-prober by default so that distributions on other partitions can find it more easily.
However, one of the most interesting features has to do with superuser commands:
cover automatically configure fingerprint readers for
sudomessages, detects specific Intel CPUs for better power savings, and correctly handles laptop edge cases.
Yes, you read that right. Instead of typing your password to confirm a sudo command, you can use a fingerprint scanner to give the terminal the proper credentials to verify you. Since it’s much harder for someone to replicate your fingerprint than your passwords, it seems like a great addition for the security-conscious user.
If you haven’t installed CachyOS yet, you can find download links in the April 2026 blog post linked above. Otherwise, if you already have a CachyOS device, running “sudo pacman -Syu” should be enough to get the April update on your system.
