There are just over 48 hours left in 2023, but the 29th is normal for most people. And among them are the developers of GNOME and third parties that create their applications for the most used desktop in the Linux world. The truth is that this week's news is neither very numerous nor very big, but what they have published is something that is average.
The following is the News list that has been in GNOME in the week from December 22 to 29. What is not mentioned this time is anything related to Sovereigh Tech, a foundation that donated one million euros to GNOME to further improve their desktop. We do not know if this trend will continue in 2024, but we do know that now it is time to write what happened this week.
This week in GNOME
- Improved discovery of the custom folder icon feature in Files (Nautilus). There is now an edit button and also, if a custom icon is set, a quick reset button. This has been a side effect of migrating some dialogs from deprecated GTK dialog APIs.
- Loupe nightly now uses the first alpha version of Glycin 1.0 to load images. This brings stricter sandboxing for image uploaders when used outside of Flatpaks. It also limits the memory usage of loaders to avoid many accidental or malicious out of memory scenarios. Memory throttling is not yet available on Flatpaks.
- Added drag and drop support to Fragments, and implemented a new (optional) setting that automatically moves the torrent file to the trash after adding it.
- Errands 45.1 has arrived with:
- Support for multiple task lists.
- Tasks now have properties: notes, start and due date, priority, completion percentage, tags.
- Improved synchronization with Nextcloud Tasks and CalDAV with support for multiple calendars and task properties.
- Import and export in «.ics» format.
- Phosh's bottom bar has been made smaller to make more room for apps like video players on the phone, especially in landscape. The screenshot shows livi, a small mobile video player:
- Since the summer they have been working on the next version of Graphs. At the moment a beta is available with:
- A major UI overhaul with new GNOME 45 widgets.
- New style previews.
- Curve adjustment.
- Touchpad gestures are now supported on the canvas for zooming and panning.
- The translations are now hosted on Weblate.
- Fretboard 5.0 has arrived with:
- An enharmonic indicator that allows you to see when chords have more than one possible name.
- Automatic chord name formatting, turning your carelessly written “bb maj7” into a beautiful “B♭maj7”.
- More consistent keyboard shortcuts.
- Improved accessibility for screen readers.
- German and Swedish translations, making Fretboard available in a total of 13 languages.
- Flare version 0.11.0 is now available. This version brings many important fixes for bugs that made previous versions almost unusable for new devices. This includes a solution for syncing contacts, but also a solution for recently breaking pairing. This release also includes many UI improvements, such as an improved settings window that introduces users to Flare, allowing you to choose between using Flare as a linked device or as a primary device (this is currently still disabled, as it is still needs more extensive testing) and offers more information about what important bugs are still in Flare and how to get in touch. Many other minor UI improvements have also been made and updated to the latest versions of GTK and libadwaita.
And that's all this week in GNOME. Next year more and better.
Images and content: TWIG.