In preparing for the GNOME 49 beta release, GNOME Shell this weekend released 49.beta.1 with a few changes worth highlighting.
First up, GNOME Shell is bringing media controls to the lock screen with GNOME 49! There has been this year-old merge request by Florian Müllner that resurrected an old code branch for bringing MPRIS controls to the lock screen. This stems from a 2018 ticket to allow showing music controls on the lock screen just as many other operating systems / desktops also implement.
Finally that media control support from the GNOME Shell lock screen is merged and ready to go with next month’s GNOME 49 release. Here is what it looks like as shown by Robert Mader in a post on that merge request:
The GNOME 49 Beta 1 also changes the brightness scale step up/down stepping to 5% each time. Plus other fixes and changes as noted in the GNOME Shell 49.beta.1 tag.
The GNOME Shell 49.beta.1 builds off the “49.beta” release from one week ago that added shutdown/restart to the lock screen along with other last minute changes ahead of GNOME 49.0 debuting in September.
