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Introducing GNOME 3.30: “Almería”

GNOME 3.30 is the latest version of GNOME 3, and is the result of 6 months’ hard work by the GNOME community. It contains major new features, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes. In total, the release incorporates 24845 changes, made by approximately 801 contributors.

3.30 has been named “Almería” in recognition of this year’s GUADEC organizing team. GUADEC is GNOME’s primary annual conference and is only possible due to the amazing work of local volunteers. This year’s event was held in Almería, Spain, and was a big success. Thank you, Team Almería!

Improved Desktop Performance

Many significant performance improvements were added to GNOME 3.30. The entire desktop now uses fewer system resources, which means you can run more apps at once without encountering performance issues.

Improved Screen Sharing

With GNOME 3.30, it is now easier than ever to control screen sharing and remote desktop sessions. A newly added system menu displays an indicator when a remote connection is active, making it easy to stop the session when finished.

Update Flatpaks Automatically

Software, the GNOME software manager, can now automatically update installed Flatpaks. Flatpak is an emerging technology that makes getting apps fast and secure. Many new apps are already available on Flathub, a repository of curated Flatpaks. Simply switch on the option to update Flatpaks, and Software will make sure you have the latest Flatpaks all the time.

Focus on the Content

The web has long been a resource for finding information and reading long-form documentation. Web, the GNOME browser, now helps you focus on the content more than ever with a new minimal reader view. When viewing a compatible web page, Web can toggle between the normal view and the clean, minimal reader view. The minimal view strips out all extraneous menus, images, and content not related to the article or document, making for a more pleasant reading experience.

Box Up Your Windows

Boxes, the GNOME virtual machine application, can now connect to remote Windows servers using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). This makes managing Windows Servers as seamless as possible, letting you concentrate on the task at hand instead of worrying about connection protocols and remote access. Boxes also now has the ability to import OVA files, making sharing virtual machines even easier.

Even More Games

Games, the retro gaming application, is faster to use now that the entire application can be navigated by gamepad. Additional improvements include:

Meet Podcasts

GNOME 3.30 introduces a new podcast app called Podcasts. Podcasts lets you subscribe and listen to your favorite podcasts, right from your desktop. Getting started with Podcasts is easy too, allowing you to import podcasts from other devices.

And That’s Not All…

As usual, there are also many other smaller improvements in this GNOME release. Here are some of them!

More Information

GNOME 3.30 also has lots to offer developers, and is translated into many languages.

Getting GNOME 3.30

GNOME’s software is Free Software: all our code is available for download and can be freely modified and redistributed according to the respective licenses. To install it, we recommend that you wait for the official packages provided by your vendor or distribution. Popular distributions will make GNOME 3.30 available very soon, and some already have development versions that include the new GNOME release.

About GNOME

The GNOME Project is an international community supported by a non-profit Foundation. We focus on user experience excellence and first-class internationalization and accessibility. GNOME is a free and open project: if you want to join us, you can.

Developer Information

GNOME 3.30 includes many new features and improvements for those working with GNOME technologies. Read on for more details!

GTK+ 3.24

A new stable release of GTK+ is now available. While most effort has been focused on GTK+ 4, some valuable features were recently backported into a GTK+ 3.24 release. These include:

Flatpak

Flatpak is the new cross-distribution, cross-desktop technology for application building and distribution. While it is separate from the GNOME project, Flatpak is central to GNOME’s developer experience plans.

Flatpak has reached significant milestone since the last GNOME release. Flatpak 1.0 is the first version in a new 1.x stable release series. This new stable series incorporates enhancements from the previous 0.11.x and 0.99.x branches. Flatpak 1.0 marks a significant improvement in performance and reliability, and includes a big collection of bug fixes. This 1.0 release also includes a collection of new features, including:

See the press release for a complete list of new features. Flathub, Flatpak’s new application distribution service, is growing steadily. It now hosts over 350 applications.

Updated Design Guidelines

GNOME 3.30 contains two major changes to GNOME’s application design guidelines. Both of these changes will come into force in the next GNOME release, version 3.32. Developers therefore have six months in which to make the necessary changes.

First, the recommendations on application menus have been updated. From 3.32, application menus will no longer be shown in the GNOME 3 top bar, and application developers are recommended to remove their application menus in time for GNOME 3.32. Menu items that are currently found in application menus can be moved elsewhere. Guidance on how to do this is included in the 3.30 version of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (see the page on application menus for more details).

Second, from GNOME 3.32, GNOME will be introducing a new style and format for application icons. To conform with the new style, applications that use a GNOME-style application icon will need to update their application icon. The 3.30 version of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines includes updated guidelines for designers and developers, which will come into effect with the 3.32 release. The GNOME design team will be assisting application developers with this process over the next six months.

While these changes will require a small amount of work from application developers, the long-term impact makes it easier for application developers to target the GNOME platform. These changes also address long-standing areas of friction for users and developers.

Other Improvements

Other improvements in GNOME 3.30 include:

Internationalization

Thanks to members of the worldwide GNOME Translation Project, GNOME 3.30 offers support for more than 37 languages with at least 80 percent of strings translated. User documentation is also available in many languages.

Numerous other languages are partially supported, with more than half of their strings translated.

Detailed statistics and more information are all available on GNOME’s translation status site. You can also find out how to help translate GNOME.

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