GNOME 46 is released on March 20 and the update will be at the heart of next month’s Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release — wondering what kind of improvements is brings?
Well, I gotcha’ covered, innit. In this post I run-through the best GNOME 46 features, changes, and usability enhancements.
And there’s a fair bit, including super-charged search features in the Nautilus file manager, streamlining to the Settings app, support for remote login over RDP, and some small but sensible buffs to GNOME Shell notifications.
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will ship with GNOME 46 by default, so if after reading this round-up you’re eager to upgrade ASAP, be patient: you don’t have to wait long to experience all of the benefits first-hand, for yourself, on your own computer.
Let’s dive in! 🤿
GNOME 46: Best New Features
File Manager Improvements
Nautilus in GNOME 46 has a lot of improvements
GNOME 46 introduces significant enhancements to the file manager, Files (also known as Nautilus to some). The application now offers extended search functionality, improved performance, and an overall more efficient user experience. As a result, file management is now a breeze with GNOME 46!
The search button located on the top of the sidebar now performs a global search. Click on this icon when you wish to search for files or folders across all indexed locations, including custom drives or directories added via the Settings > Search option.
Prefer to confine your search to the current folder? Simply click on the newly added toolbar button adjacent to the path bar to enable the “search in folder” mode. As the name suggests, it conducts the search within the current folder only. Hence, you now have two distinct search methods – one for targeted searches and another for a broader search range.
The updates do not end here though. Stay tuned for more.
Other Nautilus Tweaks
Progress for active file transfers/file operations has been moved to the bottom of the sidebar in Nautilus, making it easier to monitor them at a glance. You can click on the area (when it appears) to see detailed progress (including transfer speed rate and estimated time remaining) of active operations.
Talking of file transfers, Nautilus now gives you a heads-up if you try to copy/move a file over 4GB in size to a FAT drive/partition (which doesn’t support files larger than that). Previously, the file manager would copy up to 4GB and then fail, which was super frustrating!
Other buffs in Nautilus v46:
- Search field in preferences panel to find settings faster
- Single-click on path bar to edit location manually
- Custom folder icon feature easier to find/reset
- Protected ZIP creation now gets you to confirm password
- Setting to use detailed timestamps for file creation/recency
Finally, switching between thumbnail and list views is now instantaneous (you’ll no longer see a brief blink of nothing when switching). Yes, it sounds minor but in practice but, assuming you switch views often, the fluidity means the feature feels more, er, holistic? Not sure the right word…
Expandable Notifications
Keep an eye out for the revamped notifications in GNOME Shell 46. The on-screen alerts and message tray toasts now feature headers that specify the originating app, accompanied by a symbolic icon for easy identification.
Notifications that are embedded with action buttons or are content heavy can now be minimized or maximized. This applies to both, on-screen toasts as well as the ones that reside in the message tray.
The incorporation of these alterations are essential for the support of notification grouping. This widely anticipated feature is currently under development, aimed for incorporation in an upcoming release, optimistically the next one.
Lastly, there’s a notification amendment that comes as a joy to those who frequently connect/disconnect USB drives. The annoying “device can be removed” notifications will no longer persist long after the USB drive has been actually disconnected.
Settings Refinements
In GNOME 46 the Settings app receives a number of changes and a handful of new features which should make it easier than ever to customize your system to suit your needs (and many settings panels have had their text revised to improve clarity).
There’s a new System panel that groups together various settings previously split out and makes them logically locatable in a single place. This panel includes Region & Language, Time & Date, Users, Remote Desktop, and Secure Shell options, plus system hardware and software info.
Want to change default apps? You now need to head to the Apps panel in GNOME 46 to choose which apps open for specific file types, and to configure Removable Media options (e.g., set an app to auto-open when you insert a CD, DVD, SD card with images, etc).
In Mouse & Touchpad you’ll find a pair of new settings: you can now configure how right-click is triggered on touchpads; and access a toggle to turn off the disable touchpad while typing behaviour, which gamers in particular may appreciate.
You’ll also find some new accessibility options including a setting to show on/off shapes on toggle buttons (makes it easier to tell which is which), and display crosshair lines when using screen zoom mode. As in other panels, lots of tooltips, labels, and explanations have also been revised.
GNOME Online Accounts
Do you use GNOME Online Accounts to connect to cloud services you use? In GNOME 46 the GOA panel has undergone a major overhaul on both the front-end and backend.
Authorisation for accounts now happens using the default web browser and not, as before, an embedded web view. This improves security reassurance as, aside from being able to see the full URL you’re logging into it, the switch means it’s now possible to use USB authentication methods too.
Additionally, a new WebDAV account type has been added to enable access to online contacts, calendars and files in desktop apps, and a new Microsoft Personal account type which, when connected, lets you access OneDrive file access in Nautilus.
At the time of writing, the auth to GOA is failing due to an “Invalid Microsoft Personal redirect_uri” error. Consequently, a screenshot of this in action has not been included. It should be noted that this issue is currently being addressed and will be resolved with a forthcoming minor update to gnome-online-accounts.
App Updates
The Calendar application is now more efficient thanks to backend performance enhancements. The current month is displayed more prominently in the month view. Additionally, read-only calendars are exhibited more clearly and the mini-calendar in the app sidebar has been improved.
The Maps application has relocated the zoom controls to the bottom. User experience for favorite places has been enhanced with the addition of a helpful default “empty” state. Progress continues on improving the experimental vector map view.
The Music app gets a series of updates, which includes a shift to libadwaita widgets along with an addition of a basic preferences dialog. It discards the ‘song list’ view (which was practically ineffectual in large collections) and (unfortunately) support for Last.FM scrobbling.
Loupe, the image viewing app, now features a shift + delete shortcut for permanent image deletion. It also no longer utilizes animation when transitioning between images using keyboard shortcuts. Instead, it uses a new ‘stacked cards’ animation when swapping through images using the in-app pager buttons.
The Epiphany web browser has now begun using web app manifests in order to obtain app names and icons when creating an app from a website. It resolves some inconsistent Firefox Sync errors/handling and includes support for PKCS#11 smart card authentication.
The majority of GNOME’s Core Apps are not included in most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. However, they are usually available for installation from the repo and/or Flathub.
Plus all this
GNOME 46 also includes a variety of other improvements – a few notable ones:
- Remote login using RDP
- Tap to click is enabled by default for touchscreens
- h264 software encoding for screen recordings
- Improved Fractional Scaling support
- Experimental variable refresh rate (VRR) support
- Memory optimizations in Tracker
- GNOME System Monitor ported to GTK4
- Orca improvements
- Minimise animation subtly tweaked to look more natural.
- Press super + ctrl + 1-9 to launch respective app in Dash
- Updated wallpapers
- New default avatars
Beyond that, almost every app and component of the GNOME desktops benefits from bug fixes, performance buffs, UI tweaks, translation updates, low-level changes, and other improvements so do take those as read.
Getting GNOME 46
That is GNOME 46 in a nutshell. You now have a good idea about what to expect when you install or upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Don’t want to wait? You can try GNOME 46 using GNOME OS nightly images, or you could try the Fedora 40 Beta release as it includes most (though not yet all) of GNOME 46 and many of its core apps — it’s what I used to take the screenshots in this post.
Otherwise, hang tight! GNOME 46 is queued up to land in the Ubuntu 24.04 daily builds shortly, and will be present in the Ubuntu 24.04 beta ISO should you plan on helping to test it.