GNOME 44 is Coming – This is What’s New
The upcoming GNOME 44 release is shaping up nicely, with devs adding a raft of new features, enhanced capabilities, and visual changes.
In this article I run through the most noticeable new GNOME 44 features, and touch on a few smaller, more subtle touches you might not otherwise notice.
Keep in mind that GNOME 44 is due to be released on March 22, 2023. Accordingly, the features mentioned in this article are subject to change and/or refinement until release.
Let’s dive in!
GNOME 44: New Features
Login/Lock Screen
It feels logical to start this list at the login (and lock) screen.
Styling changes give more prominence to user account avatars (they’re MUCH bigger), and the font size of the clock has been increased. There are tweaks to the ‘highlight’ of the login field, user pod placement, and tweaks to the brightness of the Lock Screen background blur.
Small stuff overall, but the end result is a tighter presentation.
Background Apps UX
One of the biggest changes in GNOME 44 is the introduction of a new ‘Background Apps’ section in the Quick Settings menu.
A lot of modern GNOME apps are able to work in the background when their main window is closed. But as GNOME doesn’t support traditional system tray icons (though modern GNOME apps rarely use them) some UI to monitor and manage backgrounds apps was needed.
And this new section is the result.
An expandable header lists how many background apps are running. When expected, you can see the name of apps running in the background (without a visible window). You can click the ‘x’ beside an app in this list to quit it.
You don’t see the ‘background apps’ section in Quick Settings when (compatible) apps aren’t running, so you needn’t worry about it getting in the way when empty.
Do keep in mind that while you may see entries for apps like Discord, Skype, Telegram etc in the Background Apps area these icons are not “traditional tray icons” that can click on to access a menu, actions, etc.
Bluetooth Quick Settings Menu
In GNOME 44 you can manage Bluetooth devices from the Quick Settings menu. Clicking the left part of the button will toggle Bluetooth on/off as before, but there’s now a sub-menu that shows a list of paired Bluetooth devices with options to connect or disconnect to them.
I should note that you can’t pair a new device from this menu, only connect to devices you’ve previously configured through Settings > Bluetooth.
This is a handy and helpful time-saver.
More ‘Quick Settings’ Tweaks
Pods in the Quick Settings menu have a defined “split” between the left and right sections. This is because pod button are actually two: the left side is a toggle, and (where applicable) the right portion opens a sub-menu with extra actions.
As well as making that concept a bit more obvious devs have reworked the code to ensure both parts of a Quick Settings pod are keyboard navigable.
Subtitles have been added to pods to provide more information at-a-glance, e.g., which Wi-Fi network your on; which power mode is active; or how many Bluetooth devices you’re connected to.
You can now click on the speaker icon at the start of the volume slider to instantly mute (or unmute) sound, much like you could in earlier versions. And as the action is a button, it’s also possible to trigger it using keyboard navigation too.
Finally, there’s a new icon for the screenshot shortcut. The previous glyph used a camera motif that was more indicative of “photos” than “screenshots”, so the camera has been reduced in size and inset against some selection brackets to better relay function.
Icon View in File Picker
It’s taken the best part of decade (and incalculable complaint since) but GNOME 44 finally makes it possible to access thumbnail view in the GTK file picker window.
When the file picker is launched you click on the toggle at the top-right of the browser to switch from list view to icon view. Then you can browse files visually, with images, videos, and music files showing rich previews where supported.
Better late than never!
Nautilus Changes
Although it wasn’t gone for long, the “expandable folders” option in Nautilus was missed by some. The good news is that it’s back in this release, accessible from the Preferences dialog in the file manager.
When you right-click on a tab in Nautilus you’ll find a couple of additional actions, including links to close all tabs, re-open closed tab, or move tab to a new window.
And when you take a screenshot or copy an image from a web browser or other app you can now right-click in Nautilus to ‘paste’ as image, saving you time.
Improved Settings
GNOME 44 sees a swathe of refinement to various parts of the Settings experience.
In the Wi-Fi panel you can share wireless networks with other devices using a custom-generated QR code.
A reorganized Accessibility panel continues to group options by function (e.g., ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, etc) but instead of presenting them in a one long scrollable list devs have tidied them up by splitting them into separate pages.
There’s a major redesign of the Mouse & Touchpad settings panel. It now offers better explanations of features, uses clearer animations, and adds some extra options, like a toggle to disable pointer precision/mouse acceleration profile.
You can now see OS kernel version and device firmware revision in the About panel.
Finally, in Search you are (finally) able disable Settings results from appearing in the overview, as well as reorder the priority of settings results.
App Changes
- Web is now a GTK4/libadwaita app
- Weather uses a flat toolbar + smoother temperature curves
- Console has an interactive “overview” mode
Wrapping Up
So that’s GNOME 44 in a nut shell. You now have a good idea on what to expect in GNOME 44 when your preferred Linux distro of choice gets the update.
If what you see above has amped up your appetite you can try GNOME 44 yourself using the GNOME OS nightly images (which work best the Boxes virtual machine app) or by trying the latest development builds of Ubuntu 23.04 or Fedora 38, amongst others.
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