Introducing GNOME 3.36: “Gresik”

GNOME 3.36 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 24434 changes, made by approximately 780 contributors.

3.36 has been named “Gresik” in recognition of the team behind GNOME.Asia 2019. GNOME.Asia is GNOME’s official annual summit in Asia, which is only possible thanks to the hard work of local volunteers. This year’s event was held in Gresik, Indonesia, and we’d like to thank everyone who contributed to its success. Thank you, Team Gresik!

Extensions

GNOME shell extensions are now managed using a new Extensions app, rather than Software. The Extensions app handles updating extensions, configuring extension preferences and removing or disabling unwanted extensions.

Do Not Disturb

A Do Not Disturb button was added to the notifications popover. When enabled, notifications are hidden until the button is toggled off.

Lock Screen

A lot of design went into improving the login and unlock experience in GNOME this release. The resulting lock screen is more functional, easier to use, and looks elegant in its simplicity.

Desktop

The GNOME Shell received a lot of visual and functional improvements this release.

• The power off / log out options have been reorganized. There is now a visible suspend option, making suspending a computer much easier!
• System dialogs requiring a password now have an option to reveal the password text by clicking the “eye” icon.
• Most, if not all, system dialogs have been redesigned, making them more consistent and easier to read.
• App folders in the application overview can now be renamed.
• The entire interface has been improved even more, with special focus on the calendar popover and overview search.

Settings

Settings received a number of improvements this release.

• The sections have been rearranged, making them easier and faster to navigate.
• The privacy section now lists applications that have been granted permission to access location services, camera and microphone. Access can be revoked on a per-app basis.
• The user and about sections both received an interface redesign. Both are more explicit in their presentation of information, and make changing settings easier.

Software

Software now automatically detects metered networks such as mobile data networks. When a metered network is detected, Software pauses updates in order to reduce data usage.

Parental Controls

The Initial Setup assistant gained the ability to set up the initial user with parental controls. This adds a page in the setup that permits or denies access to applications and software.

Boxes

Boxes now includes a welcome tutorial, introducing users to the various features offered. It also now has a new creation assistant when creating virtual machines, allows setting the number of CPUs per virtual machine, and now supports UEFI booting.

Web

Web can now load and view PDFs directly in the browser window. The interface has been further improved, making it even more usable on smaller screens. And Web now supports a dark mode for use with dark desktop themes.

And That’s Not All…

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

• GNOME’s initial setup assistant was refreshed with a cleaner and more efficient look and feel.
• It is now possible to log into a Last.fm or ListenBrainz account and use the account with GNOME Music.
• Music has improved support when downloading missing cover art for albums.
• User documentation for numerous applications was grossly out of date and has now been updated.
• Contacts has a refreshed interface when editing a contact.
• Users of NVIDIA’s proprietary drivers will be able to launch applications using the discrete GPU from within GNOME Shell now, via the “Launch on Discrete GPU” menu item.
• Clocks was completely redesigned. It features a responsive design, making it easier to use on small screens.
• Polari now previews links in the chat view.
• Hidden files can be used as new document templates in Files.
• Passwords and Keys, GNOME’s password and keychain manager app, was enhanced to show public SSH keys. The interface is more adaptive on smaller screens too.
• Fractal, a GNOME Matrix client, can now play videos directly inside the chat window.

More Information

GNOME 3.36 also has lots to offer developers, and is translated into many languages.

Getting GNOME 3.36

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 3.36 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 3.36 includes many new features and improvements for those working with GNOME technologies. Read on for more details!

Flatpak

Flatpak is a 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.

During this release cycle, the Flatpak team released a new stable series: 1.6.x. This introduces an update monitoring API available via the Flatpak Portal D-Bus interface. An application can use this API to monitor for updates, prompting the user to install the update and restart the application. Along side the D-Bus API, a library called libportal offers asynchronous wrappers for most Flatpak portals, with a familiar GObject API.

Other Improvements

Other improvements in GNOME 3.36 include:

• Add a new GMemoryMonitor API to notify apps of memory pressure situations using low-memory-monitor.
• Support adding call flags and timeouts to method calls generated by gdbus-codegen using the new --glib-min-required and --glib-max-allowed arguments.
• Support dispose functions for GSources.
• Add g_array_steal(), g_ptr_array_steal() and g_byte_array_steal() convenience APIs for stealing elements from arrays without freeing them.
• Add g_warning_once() convenience API for printing a warning only once during a process’ lifetime.
• Add g_get_os_info() API to read from /etc/os-release (or the equivalent on other platforms).
• See the NEWS file for more details.

Internationalization

Thanks to members of the worldwide GNOME Translation Project, GNOME 3.36 offers support for more than 38 languages with at least 80 percent of strings translated. User documentation is also available in many languages.

• Basque
• Brazilian Portuguese
• British English
• Catalan
• Catalan (Valencian)
• Chinese (China)
• Chinese (Taiwan)
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• Finnish
• French
• Friulian
• Galician
• German
• Greek
• Hungarian
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Malay
• Norwegian Bokmål
• Occitan
• Polish
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian
• Serbian (Latin)
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

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.