The GNOME Project released today the alpha version of the upcoming GNOME 46 “Kathmandu” desktop environment series for early adopters, application developers, and Linux enthusiasts who want to get an early taste of the new features and improvements.
Highlights of the GNOME 46 alpha release include headless remote logins via GDM (GNOME Display Manager), a new terminal emulator app called Prompt, a new offline documentation app called Biblioteca, GTK4 ports for Swell Foop and Settings, headless GNOME Classic session support, built-in support for WebP images, as well as JPEG XL (JXL) as default image format for backgrounds.
The Nautilus (Files) file manager in GNOME 46 will confirm passwords when creating protected ZIP archives, improve discoverability of custom folder icons, allow users to change owner/group and any permissions under admin:///, support detection of copy/move operations of files over the 4GB limit on FAT filesystems, add a detailed date and time format option, and allow Alt+Down to revert more than one Alt+Up.
Nautilus (Files) in GNOME 46 alpha
GNOME 46 includes an update to the GNOME Control Center (Settings) application, with a newly structured System panel that combines the Region & Language, Date & Time, About, and Users panels. There’s also a fresh Apps panel grouping the Removable Media and Default Apps, alongside an “About Settings” dialogue. Adjustments are also made in Mouse & Touchpad, allowing users to disable the touchpad whilst typing and select from multiple touchpad click methods. The Appearance panel has improved with better background chooser performance. However, the Settings application still remains at version 45.2 in this alpha release.
The Alpha version of GNOME 46 features an updated GNOME Shell component, with a performance-enhanced application search, improvements in high contrast, fixed issues with scroll handling on sliders, on-screen keyboard, calendar pop-up, and arrow navigation in search results, improved monitor OSD labels, a more reliable recording indicator used in Light style, as well as enhanced management of desktop windows during workspace animations.
The Mutter window and composite manager have also received updates in GNOME 46 alpha, with features including the ability to discard monitor configuration with fractional scale when not required, the capability to inhibit real-time scheduling when mode-setting, headless setup support for Xwayland when using the NVIDIA graphics driver, improved sloppy and mouse focus modes, the ability to force EGLStream with the NVIDIA graphics driver, as well as increased Wayland and tablet support.
The Epiphany (GNOME Web) 46 web browser is also included with changes like improved Firefox Sync support when gnome-keyring isn’t installed, removed Google Safe Browsing support, reduced adblock filter update interval on metered connections, hidden developer context menu actions by default, and the ability to hide various context menu items when selecting text.
GNOME Maps 46 ships with redesigned zoom buttons inspired by the Loupe image viewer, support for public transit routing with OpenTripPlanner v2 GraphQL (currently enabled for Norway’s national Entur API provider), redesigned OSM account dialog using Adwaita widgets, modernized setup UI for OpenStreetMap POI editing, as well as simplified flexible storage format for the place store cache.
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GNOME Calculator 46 is now capable of substring searches in the unit selection dropdowns, supports the Argentine Peso currency, the troy ounce (ozt) unit, and can reload conversion rates if search-provider conversion fails.
The GNOME 46 alpha update features an updated GNOME System Monitor app, now ported to the GTK4 toolkit with a user interface that aligns with the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). It also supports user installation of local flatpak files, and the GNOME Software 46 app can now recognize apps verified by Flathub.
In addition, GNOME Software 46 has the ability to recognize links in package update descriptions, loads category pages faster, offers improved search matches with multiple words, discreetly shows package names in the UI, provides better application safety checks, and displays correct messages when installing firmware updates.
GNOME Text Editor 46 alpha brings improved margin for RTL (Right-to-Left) languages, the ability to cancel document loading when closing a tab or a window to fix high CPU usage when doing Pango line breaking on extremely large files, as well as more GNOME HIG and XDG compatibility.
Other than that, Online Accounts has been removed from GNOME Initial Setup and it now uses the default web browser for authentication, which is a more secure method to log into your favorite accounts. Support for CardDav and CalDav providers has been introduced as well in Online Accounts and the Last.fm and Media Server providers were removed.
WebDav support in Settings > Online Accounts
GNOME 46 alpha will be available for public testing as part of the development snapshots of the upcoming Fedora Linux 40 Workstation (or Fedora Rawhide), openSUSE Tumbleweed, and other GNU/Linux distributions that offer pre-release images with the GNOME desktop environment preinstalled. More details on how to test this alpha version are available in the release announcement.
Last updated 11 hours ago