The GNOME 48 Beta release was officially announced this morning as the latest stepping stone toward the official GNOME 48 desktop release due out in mid-March.
Some of the highlights of new changes found in GNOME 48 Beta include:
– The GNOME Web (Epiphany) web browser has modernized its import dialogs.
– GNOME Backgrounds has updated its default background for GNOME 48.
– GNOME Builder brings style improvements to match libadwaita, better integration with Elementary, and various other improvements.
– GNOME Calendar now allows selecting the timezones for the start and end times of events.
– GNOME Maps has redesigned its user location marker and improved rendering of route markers and public transit route itineraries.
– GNOME Music adds support for HiDPI album covers.
– GNOME Remote Desktop now supports zero-copy rendering with Vulkan and VA-API video acceleration.
– GNOME Shell 48 Beta boasts improved screen time limit support for that new GNOME 48 feature.
– GNOME Software now supports installing Flatpaks via a flatpak+https: link.
– GNOME Text Editor has more refinements on its design updates.
– Switching over to Adwaita Fonts by default.
– The GTK 4.17.4 toolkit adds a GTK back-end for Android devices that is considered experimental.
– GTK’s X11 and Broadway back-ends are now considered deprecated.
– GVFS adds support for libnfs 6 and now supports Sharepoint drives.
– GNOME LocalSearch drops GStreamer for metadata extraction and now uses FFmpeg directly.
– The Loupe image viewer has improvements to its image editing support.
– GNOME Mutter has the new Display Control gdctl utility.
– GNOME Mutter allows configuring HDR via the DisplayConfig D-Bus API.
– The Nautilus file manager has faster batch file deletions. Nautilus is also faster for simple recursive searches through mount monitors.
– Snapshot now detects missing camera permissions and QR code detection improvements.
– The XDG Desktop Portal GNOME adds the USB portal back-end.
Missing out on the GNOME 48 beta tagging is the new dynamic triple buffering for GNOME 48’s Mutter and GNOME Shell grouping notifications by app but will be found in the next releases of those components ahead of next month’s GNOME 48 stable debut.
The GNOME 48 Beta official release announcement can be found on GNOME Discourse.
The GNOME 48 release candidate is expected at the beginning of March while the official GNOME 48.0 debut is expected to happen on 19 March. GNOME 48 in turn will be found with the likes of Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora Workstation 42.
