The GNOME Project today announced the alpha version of the upcoming GNOME 47 desktop environment series, due out later this year, for public testing, so it’s time to take a look at the new features and improvements.
Some of the biggest changes in the GNOME 47 desktop environment include support for accent colors (yes, finally!), support for using three or more fingers for touchpad gestures, XDG dialog protocol implementation, support for the DRM lease protocol, and re-implementation of support for legacy X11 cursor themes.
GNOME 47 also promises improved notifications on the lock screen, the ability to center the time on the lock screen when using a 12h format, support for building GNOME Shell with Mutter built without X11 support, and improved monitor matching when restoring your windows on monitor hotplug.
Furthermore, it improves workspace previews in the Window List and Workspace Indicator GNOME Shell extensions, adds support for persistent remote login sessions to GNOME Remote Desktop, and adds playground icons and dark mode support when drawing public transit routes on the map to GNOME Maps.
The Epiphany (GNOME Web) web browser received a new preference to toggle navigation gestures, the ability to set brightness and contrast for the dark reader mode, a “Not Now” option to the save password popover, a delete action to the text box context menu, a “Clear” button to the address bar, and many UI improvements.
GNOME 47 also rewrites the gnome-initial-setup-copy-worker that runs when the newly-created user signs in to copy files from the temporary gnome-initial-setup home directory to the user’s real home directory to no longer use GFile and GVFS, due to issues with GVFS running very early in the session startup.
On top of that, GNOME 47 promises support for entering new credentials via standard input when using grdctl to GNOME Remote Desktop, an earmark mode button to toggle earmark input, new preferences, and a new keyboard shortcuts window to GNOME Sudoku, as well as a much-improved Orca screen reader with better Wayland support.
Check out the release announcement page for a full changelog with all the changes implemented in this alpha version of the GNOME 47 desktop environment, which is slated for release on September 18th, 2024. Until then, the Beta and Release Candidate milestones should arrive throughout August.