GNOME 48, the highly anticipated update of the GNOME desktop environment, is HERE. Currently in its beta phase and ready for testers, this upcoming release is not just an update—it’s a significant leap forward.
GNOME 48 brings new features, improves performance, and enhancing the overall user experience with updates to the Gnome Shell.
Let’s dive into the top new features that GNOME 48 is bringing to your desktop.
Digital Wellbeing
First off, GNOME 48 introduces a Digital Wellbeing section within settings. If you’re familiar with macOS’s Screen Time, this will feel very similar.
This new feature gives you clear insights into your computer usage habits, showing exactly how much time you’re spending on your device.
Furthermore, it provides you to take control with tools designed to help you manage your usage. For instance, you can easily set daily screen time limits to promote a healthier digital lifestyle.
In addition, GNOME 48 allows you to set break reminders. When its activated, these reminders will pop up as notifications, gently helping you to take regular breaks and manage your screen time for improved wellbeing.
Audio Player: Decibels
GNOME 48 brings Decibels as the new default audio player, now is part of core GNOME application. It’s important to note that Decibels is designed to be a straightforward audio player, not a comprehensive music management suite like Rhythmbox or Elisa.
While it excels at playing music files, it intentionally omits features such as a music library, track Browse, folder watching, or album art management.
Instead, Decibels focuses on providing a clean and efficient audio playback experience. However, it still packs useful features, including a visual waveform display, a user-friendly scrubbable seek bar, intuitive playback controls, and a volume slider for precise audio adjustments.
Integrated Image Editing in GNOME Image Viewer
GNOME Image Viewer in version 48 brings built-in image editing capabilities. Initially supporting PNG and JPEG image files, the integrated tools allow for essential edits directly within the viewer.
These tools include cropping, rotating, and flipping images, streamlining your workflow for quick image adjustments.
Moreover, the new adaptive preview mode enhances usability by providing a direct option to open images within the Image Viewer, making quick edits even more accessible.
Fluid Performance with Triple Buffering
GNOME 48 brings dynamic triple buffering, a significant under-the-hood improvement aimed at enhancing the perceived smoothness of the GNOME desktop. This technology works to minimize skipped frames, resulting in noticeably more fluid animations and transitions throughout the system.
To put it simply imagine triple buffering as having extra “buckets” to handle visual data, ensuring a smoother flow of visuals on your screen, rather than a direct, sometimes choppy, stream.
Technically speaking, triple buffering enhances the Mutter window manager’s capabilities. It allows the compositor to start processing the next frame in advance, even if the previous frame is still being displayed.
In practice, this enhancement is particularly useful during moments of intense graphical activity, such as when opening the GNOME Shell overview after a period of inactivity, leading to a more responsive and visually pleasing experience.
Enhanced Notification Management with Grouped Notifications
Finally, GNOME Shell includes the much-anticipated grouped notifications feature. This feature represents a significant achievement by the GNOME development team, reflecting countless hours dedicated to its refinement.
Grouped notifications promise to simplify alert management, making it easier to stay on top of your notifications without feeling overwhelmed.
Better Flatpak Handling
GNOME 48 significantly improves Flatpak support. GNOME Software is now equipped to handle Flatpak and reference URLs more effectively. This enhancement simplifies the process of installing Flatpak applications directly from web links, making it more user-friendly and accessible.
Battery Charge Limiting for Laptops
For users running GNOME on laptops, GNOME 48 introduces battery charge limiting. This valuable feature allows you to set a custom charging limit, which can contribute to preserving battery health and extending its lifespan by preventing it from constantly charging to 100%.
HDR Support on Wayland
Lastly, GNOME introduces HDR support for Wayland. Developers have confirmed that this new HDR implementation substantially improves the playback quality of HDR10 content, bringing richer colors and greater dynamic range to your HDR video experiences on GNOME.
In Conclusion
That’s pretty much about the GNOME 48. Stay tuned for the official release to fully explore all that GNOME 48 has to offer!
