The GNOME Project released today the RC (Release Candidate) development version of the upcoming GNOME 49 desktop environment series, scheduled for release later this month on September 17th.
The GNOME 49 Release Candidate has some interesting changes, especially the re-enablement of X11 support in the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) component by default as the devs find it hard to cleanly separate GDM’s ability to launch modern X11 sessions. X11 support was disabled in the GNOME 49 alpha release.
“We found it difficult to cleanly separate GDM’s ability to launch modern X11 sessions (which we intended to keep enabled in GNOME 49) from the rest of GDM’s X11 integration (which we intended to disable but leave intact for GNOME 49),” said the devs. “We still plan to remove GDM’s full X11 integration in a future version, and leave only the ability to launch modern X11 sessions.”
On top of that, GNOME 49 Release Candidate improves the styling of media notifications on the lock screen, legacy tray icon support, and connecting to WPA(2) Enterprise networks in GNOME Shell, and adds support for ICtCp Tone Mapping and ICC profiles to Mutter, which now advertises Broadcast RGB support.
Mutter, GNOME’s window and composite manager, also received extended sRGB support for blending by default, support for variations of YCbCr formats, revamped initial Wayland window configuration, devkit launchers, support for moving the cursor at maximum refresh rate with VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), color calibration D-Bus API support, and improved picking fractional scaling factors.
GNOME 49 Release Candidate also increases the default virtual machine storage disks in GNOME Boxes from 20 GB to 30 GB, improves very large number handling performance in GNOME Calculator, and makes month names more prominent and tweaks the views and the preview popover in GNOME Calendar.
Among other noteworthy changes, GNOME 49 RC adds support for SPICE and a Shortcuts window to the GNOME Connections app, implements a full-screen mode to the GNOME Console terminal emulator, and adds support for configuring the Orca screen reader from GNOME Control Center (Settings).
It also adds a Ctrl+W keyboard shortcut to GNOME Font Viewer for closing the window, adds support for the explicit color calibration API to GNOME Control Center’s Color panel, enables support for viewing past updates in the rpm-ostree plugin in GNOME Software, and sorts files incrementally in MTP-backed directories in Nautilus.
The GNOME Remote Desktop app received some attention too, with support for relative pointer movements and support for extending the desktop with a virtual monitor via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), as well as support for systemd service management of all units via the grdctl CLI tool.
Last but not least, the Orca screen reader received a systemd user service, improved line identification of web content with sub/superscripts, improved performance of finding “clickables” in web content, support for “politeness” level in the accessible “announcement” event, and structural navigation in all apps.
Check out the release announcement page for a full changelog with all the changes implemented in this Release Candidate version of the GNOME 49 desktop environment, which you can test by downloading the ISO image and running it in a virtual machine. The final release is expected on September 17th, 2025.
