The GNOME Project has announced the beta release of its upcoming GNOME 48 desktop environment, now available for public testing. This release introduces a variety of new features and improvements, including the new Adwaita fonts, a new default wallpaper, enhanced screen time limit support, and the GNOME Display Control (gdctl) utility, which allows for HDR configuration via the DisplayConfig D-Bus API.
Among the updates in the GNOME Control Center, the search bar now grabs focus by default with shortcuts. Users can launch Settings in a streamlined single-panel mode, adjust monitor HDR settings, and utilize new media key shortcuts for functions like “Restart” and “Logout.” The beta also introduces a new Wellbeing panel dedicated to screen time tracking.
The GNOME Display Manager (GDM) has been updated to function without Xwayland in a Wayland-only environment, and it now supports new configuration settings such as banner-message-path and -source. The GNOME Calculator has introduced a new Conversion mode, while GNOME Calendar has improved timezone selection for events and the display of weather data in the Month view.
GNOME Maps features a redesigned user location marker and enhanced route rendering, while GNOME Music now includes support for HiDPI covers. Furthermore, GNOME Remote Desktop has integrated support for zero-copy rendering with Vulkan and VAAPI.
Other enhancements include GNOME Software’s ability to install Flatpak apps via a flatpak+https link, a repositioned search bar in the GNOME Text Editor, and the introduction of a USB portal backend in xdg-desktop-portal-gnome. The new Papers app has replaced Evince as the default document viewer, allowing for viewing, searching, and annotating various document formats.
For a complete list of changes, users can refer to the release announcement page. The final version of GNOME 48 is expected to launch on March 19th, 2025, with a Release Candidate expected in early March.
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