Iris OS Onyx/Features

Apps
Iris OS Onyx adds in new apps and features. A secondary browser made by iriSoft, SafeBrowser, was added into the OS but does not replace Firefox entirely. A new updated Notes app was introduced with a new icon, templates including a to-do list, and the area to type on is a close-up of an actual notepad with animations of flipping through pages when a user clicks on the page up or down buttons; rendering the app pretty GPU-intensive. Hence, the animations were more exciting than in Iris OS '16 (changed to simple transitions in early 2020). The file manager also now has tabs. Iris Chat and iriSoft System Care are pre-installed. The irisMart App Marketplace also debuted in Iris OS Onyx, since iriSoft announced during the announcement of Iris OS Onyx "Have you ever went to peel an onion to the last tiny silver to find the app you're looking for? That's obsolete in the irisMart, which has applications for everyone's needs."

Core features
Alt+Tab (on Windows keyboards) or Alternate - Switch (on Iris OS keyboards) now shows up Firefox or SafeBrowser tabs. iriSoft added this feature because they thought they'd make Onyx more convenient to use. The OS is now up to 38% faster as well.

User interface
iriSoft made a new UI for the OS - Aurora Shell, which includes a wallpaper-matching color for the dock and transparency in the UI elements, similar to Windows Aero used in Windows Vista and 7. It also includes some new, exciting animations that made the OS "more intuitive", but way too fun so iriSoft went for simple transitions in January 2020.

Start screen
Iris OS adds in a radically new start screen. It is full-screen and has 2 columns - the top column is used for notifications and news, while the bottom column shows a list of apps and Web shortcuts, showing their corresponding icon. The normal list of apps is Firefox, Google, the unremovable Desktop icon which is a shortcut to the desktop, and Notes. There are 2 tabs in the bottom column - the Apps tab, and the Widgets tab. Users can add widgets using the plus "+" button on the bottom right, and drag-and-drop them to the desktop on the bottom left, where it says "Drag and drop widgets to desktop here" on a light blue square. It was a breakthrough but stole the idea from Windows 8. Thus, the OS was more touch-friendly. On login, the user is sometimes presented with a message saying there would be poor performance due to the Aurora UI animations on some PCs. Then the user is presented with the list of apps floating up one by one, the top column zooms in, and the "Start" text slides from the left, similar to Windows 8.