GNOME 49: What's new, technical changes, and apps that set the course

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The latest version of the benchmark Linux desktop comes packed with practical changes and quality improvements that elevate the everyday experience. GNOME 49 It arrives after six months of intense community work, with a clear focus on modernizing key apps, strengthening performance, and taking important technical steps for the future of the project.

This version, codenamed “Brescia” (named after the Italian city that hosted GUADEC), changes historical pieces of the ecosystem and polishes the details that are most noticeable when using the system. There are new features in Shell and Mutter, new default apps and accessibility settings. that make a difference in everyday use.

Overview: Launch, Philosophy, and How to Test It

The stable launch of the series takes place on September 17 and closes a previous phase with the label 49.rc in GNOME Shell and Mutter, where final fixes and tweaks have been concentrated. Distributions such as Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora Workstation 43 They will adopt it as the default desktop, with development builds that have already been showing very positive sensations.

As always, GNOME software is FOSS: The code is available for download, modification, and redistribution according to its licenses. The official recommendation is to wait for your distribution's packages, although you can also try the GNOME OS image in a virtual machine with Boxes if curiosity gets the better of you.

The project highlights the drive of its community and encourages anyone who can to financially support its development. Any donation helps us dedicate more time and resources to continuing to improve the desktop for everyone.

Organizationally, GNOME is an international community supported by a non-profit foundation, with a strong commitment to accessibility and internationalizationIf you want to participate, the doors are open and there is room for different skills, not just development, and you can also explore other desktop alternatives.

Two historic relays: Video Player and Papers

The first big news is the changing of the guard in multimedia playback: the veteran Totem gives way to the new Video player (formerly Showtime). Built with GTK 4 and Libadwaita, it abandons the GTK 3 foundation and focuses on a modern, fluid experience. The window is “chromeless”, controls are hidden during playback and return when needed, and the interface breathes cleanliness.

It's not just a facade: the new player covers the essentials with ease. Adjustable speed, support for multiple audio tracks and subtitles, video rotation, screen capture, and chapter management, among other practical features that put it on par with what is expected today from a simple but effective player.

In parallel, another important change: Papers It replaces Evince as the default document viewer. It was originally derived from its code, but has been completely revamped with GTK 4 and Libadwaita, along with an updated interface. It performs better, it looks cleaner and simplifies PDF annotation, as well as integrating digital signatures.

In compatibility, Papers covers what we will need on a daily basis: PDF, DjVu, TIFF and comics in CBR, CBZ, CBT, and CB7. It allows you to view, search, annotate, and organize documents conveniently, with a clear interface that makes it easy to find what you're looking for.

Desktop and Shell: shortcuts, animations, and useful controls

GNOME 49 introduces changes to some very visible points of the experience. The login screen now includes a accessibility menu more prominent, much easier to locate. And in the lock screen You will now see a media control widget that allows you to pause or skip a track if playback is in progress, without unlocking.

The section of Quick Settings gains consistency: the “Do Not Disturb” switch is moved here from the notifications area, where it always seemed somewhat out of place. Additionally, when HDR is enabled, it is now possible change the brightness of each monitor independently, even in multiple configurations and with external displays.

In GNOME Shell 49, animations have been tweaked to make everything feel smoother and more polished. Some unnecessary transitions have been removed and new scaling animations are introduced in notifications and popovers, as well as “quad” animations in elements like the notification curtain.

Other fine-tuning tweaks you'll appreciate: notifications of grouped captures and recordings, 5% steps in brightness adjustment, an animated indicator while searching in the Activity View, a better indication when battery charge limits are active and an improved icon for active Wi‑Fi without a hotspot.

Essential Files and Utilities: Time-Saving Enhancements

The file manager, Nautilus (Files), has received practical changes in its daily routine. The search menu has been redesigned: “pills” with filters More visible and a calendar-based date selector to narrow down results without wasting time. You'll use it and save yourself clicks.

When you cut files to move them, you will now see a dashed edge around your thumbnails to distinguish what is in transit. The hidden ones are shown with slight transparency, so it is easier to locate what is not visible; small details that add up.

Copying has also been made easier network addresses in the network panel, MTP directory loading is incremental (better mobile handling), the dialog batch renaming It adapts to the window, the application switcher uses a modern dialog, and an invaluable shortcut appears: Ctrl + . opens the current folder in the terminal.

Other tweaks: Side panel local mount points are sorted by device name, trailing slash is added to paths entered with ~ and emptying the bin has become more reliable, finishing off a trash management more robust throughout the system.

Core Apps: Web, Calendar, Maps, Software, Camera and more

The Navigator Web (Epiphany) has had a very active cycle: more than a hundred issues resolved and new features. Ad blocking improves with optional regional lists, the address field adds a site-specific menu with related actions, and in read mode appears the estimated reading time.

Security and management also take a level up: improved support for smart cards, a dedicated dialog for password management and a redesigned security window. In addition, live suggestions and a button to add search engines via OpenSearch when a site supports it, and a more powerful in-page search with case-sensitive and whole-word matching.

In everyday life, other details on the Web are appreciated, such as bookmark editing in a specific mode, the online autocomplete in the address bar and a mute button when a tab is playing sound. These are small things that, when combined, make everything more convenient.

The calendar takes a significant leap forward in accessibility. Its interface has been reorganized to better adapt to different window sizes and now allows you to manually hide the sidebar to see more content, ideal for small screens or tiled windows. Events can be exported to .ics to share or backup.

In addition, they have been applied readability improvements In event viewing, support for keyboard navigation and use with assistive technologies has been strengthened. The goal was to be fully accessible, and the app finally lives up to expectations for many people who depend on these functions.

Maps also gets helpful details. In supported regions, stations metro and railway They show local icons, and when you look at certain roads you can see the highway shields. In addition, labels (street names, numbers) become interactive: When you click on them, the location's information page opens, allowing you to find out more or add it to your favorites.

On the social front, Maps now shows the OpenStreetMap profile photos in the account dialog and add POI searches focused on Vegan and vegetarian options, a handy hint to help you find similar sites at a glance.

The app store, Software, has gotten serious about performance. A major performance-related bottleneck has been attacked. Parsing data from Flatpak repositories like Flathub: it significantly reduces memory usage and the processing speed increases, with an experience faster when browsing and searching for apps, especially in modest teams.

Other core apps are also making progress: Snapshot/Camera adds hardware-accelerated video encoding, support for scanning mirrored QR codes, defaults to H.264/MP4 and GTK YUV support when available, and warns if missing GStreamer plugins necessary.

En Weather Refresh shortcuts like F5 and Ctrl+R, grid improvements, and a rewrite to TypeScript. The Text editor Improves session saving, filters better when searching in documents, reloads the file if you change the encoding in Properties and adopts the new searchable shortcut dialog from Libadwaita.

The terminal Ptyxis —by default in Ubuntu 25.10— introduces a menu for search across containers and profiles (Alt + ,), handles mailto: links and allows you to start full screen with the option --fullscreen. The app Connections (remote desktop) can forward multi-touch input from the client, supports relative mouse input (key for some games) and adds extended virtual monitors.

GNOME Circle and Developer Experience

GNOME Circle adds two new members to round out the ecosystem: Mahjongg, a polished version of the classic chip game, and Wordbook, a dictionary supported by WordNet and eSpeakTwo lightweight pieces that expand the catalog of quality apps curated by the community.

For those who develop with the platform, this edition brings together a range of improvements in the development experienceMany applications adopt the new Shortcuts Dialog by Libadwaita, a modern, responsive keyboard shortcut widget with integrated search that replaces the classic shortcuts window.

In addition, the Mother Development Kit as an alternative to the method --nested to run development versions of GNOME Shell on the host system. It relies on Toolbx and makes it easy to test composer and shell changes without extra hassle.

HDR Backgrounds and Color Management: Taking Color to the Next Level

GNOME 49 launches a catalog of HDR wallpapers Designed for the Display P3 color space and high dynamic range displays. Thanks to improved color management in Mutter, the desktop can render backgrounds at 16 bits per channel, with a richness of color and contrast that we have not had until now.

Behind this jump there is work in the image pipeline: the loading backend, glycine, has been optimized to perform better in color-managed scenarios, and improvements have been made in Mutter to make the output consistent, accurate, and most importantly, fluid in sight.

Remote Desktop: More capable from the outside

The integrated functionality of remote Desktop grows in this version. It is now possible to forward multi-touch input from a touchscreen device to a remote GNOME session, which is especially useful on tablets or convertible laptops acting as clients.

Also comes the relative mouse input, a requirement for many titles and applications that expect that mode of interaction, and the possibility of add virtual monitors additional from the client even if the remote machine does not physically have more displays.

Mutter in depth: Fractional scaling, VRR, and new capabilities

The compositor and window manager, Mother, receives a large wave of technical improvements. Decoding formats are incorporated 10, 12 and 16 bits, the support of is reinforced ICC profiles and a default is used sRGB Extended for graphics mixing, achieving a more faithful and smooth rendering.

Fractional scaling is improved with new calculations exact quotients, resulting in sharper text and interfaces at different screen densities. In environments with VRR, the cursor can move at the maximum available rate, and have been adjusted speed-limited visual alerts to comply with the EAA.

In connectivity and protocols, Mutter implements wl-seat v10 Wayland, offers a custom service client that assigns default window labels on Wayland clients, adds support for Broadcast RGB and reintroduces the snippet cache to optimize compositions.

An API is released for (dis)inhibit cursor visibility, the speed settings are separated from the trackpoint relative to the mouse, the touchpad acceleration profile is applied at startup and the windows are suspended when the lock screen is activated, reducing consumption and unnecessary activity.

In the back office, the loading of funds is delegated to Glycin (in Rust), there are improvements in the initial configuration of windows in Wayland to gain stability and a D‑Bus Color Calibration API for monitors, fine-tuning color reproduction to professional needs.

More system polish: security, power and controls

Security is reinforced with a transversal change: the Image loading in GTK apps is now isolated in a sandbox to mitigate exploitation vectors. It's a silent but highly significant step that hardens the attack surface without bothering the user.

Quality of life improvements are also coming: the battery icon in the top bar indicates when the device is charging. It is connected to power but not charging (for example, with “Preserve battery health” enabled), which helps verify that everything is as it should be.

If you use HDR, there is specific brightness controls in Quick Settings that affect external displays and allow you to adjust multiple monitors at once. And if you're one of those who prefers to manage the system from the lock screen, an option has been added to show restart and power off on the lock screen by this setting: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver restart-enabled true.

Under the hood, the trash management It has improved in reliability and consistency. These are minor changes, but they prevent scares and strange behavior when you're in a hurry to recover or permanently delete something.

Base changes: Wayland by default and greater integration with systemd

One of the most talked about moves of this cycle: GNOME 49 disables the X11/Xorg session in GNOME Shell and relies on Wayland. Applications that depend on X11 continue to work through Xwayland, and GDM allows you to start other X11-based sessions, but the GNOME session itself becomes Wayland-only.

Distribution manufacturers retain the possibility of re‑enable X11 support in some modules at compile time, although everything points to the fact that in GNOME 50 the X11 code will be removed, not just disabled. This is a logical step in advancing the modern graphics stack on Linux.

Integration with systemd becomes narrower and marks a turning point. GDM adopts systemd‑userdb, a dynamic account management system designed to replace legacy behaviors and improve the management of multiple and remote sessions, introducing a direct dependency (with a provisional alternative route based on static accounts).

Furthermore, gnome-session removes its internal service manager, which since GNOME 3.34 was only used in the absence of systemd as fallbackThis mechanism is now considered obsolete and a hindrance to functions such as saved and restored session, so it disappears to pave the way for those capabilities.

In practice, GNOME 49 is more tied to systemd than everIt will still be possible to run it on systems with other inits, but the effort will fall on distributions with alternative approaches, which will not have official support from the project for those configurations.

CR status, stability and availability

GNOME Shell phase 49.rc brought, in addition to animation adjustment, improvements in WPA(2) connections —notable in corporate environments—, better support of legacy icons in the tray and a more careful style in the lock screen multimedia notifications. Extensive work has also been done on bug fixes and memory leaks.

Profile support has been integrated into Mutter rc ICC, a service client for default window labels on Wayland clients, Broadcast RGB, the implementation of wl-seat v10, the loading of funds with Glycin in Rust, better choice of factors fractional scaling, color calibration by D-Bus, smoother cursors with VRR, a restructuring of the initial handling of window configuration in Wayland and the adoption of sRGB Extended in the mix.

Specialized media that have tested development builds in Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 They describe GNOME 49 as a “very polished” incremental update: no fireworks, but plenty of cumulative changes that feel fast and consistent in real-world use.

In the panel Settings (Control Center) You will see a donation button and information for “Support GNOME” under System > About (note: on Ubuntu it is disabled). The Screens It has been redesigned to fit into small resolutions, avoiding the classic problem of not being able to access options when you lower the resolution too much, and in Accessibility Added a switch to open the Orca screen reader.

Coming full circle, GNOME 48 will continue to receive maintenance updates. until the arrival of GNOME 50 (planned for spring 2026), giving time to those who cannot make the immediate leap due to distribution or compatibility policies.

Anyone who approaches GNOME 49 will find a desktop that exudes modernity and consistency: more performance in the store, new default apps that simplify common tasks, more logical controls where you expect to find them, and a technical foundation that pushes towards Wayland, HDR, and better color managementIt's the kind of version that, without garish headlines, makes everything work better.