Introducing GNOME 48, “Bengaluru”

March 19, 2025

The GNOME project is excited to introduce GNOME 48, a fresh release shaped by six months of hard work from our amazing community. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to making this happen!

Named “Bengaluru”, this release pays tribute to the dedication of the GNOME Asia 2024 organizers. Let’s take a look at what’s new in GNOME 48.

Notification Stacking

GNOME 48 introduces stacking to the notification list. Notifications from the same app are grouped into stacks, each of which can be expanded to reveal individual messages. Stacking keeps the notification list organized and makes it easier to navigate. It also prevents the notification list from becoming too long.

Notification stacking is the latest in a series of notifications improvements, which included other enhancements in the previous GNOME 47 release. Together, these changes make notifications both more powerful and easier to use.

Performance Improvements

GNOME 48 includes a number of notable performance improvements. The most significant of these is the introduction of dynamic triple buffering. This change has undergone significant review and testing over a period of five years and improves the perceived smoothness of changes on screen, with fewer skipped frames and more fluid animations. This has been achieved by enhancing the concurrency capabilities of Mutter, the GNOME display manager, and is particularly effective at handling sudden bursts of activity.

Other performance improvements in GNOME 48 include:

GNOME’s JavaScript engine, a core part of the desktop, has reduced CPU and memory usage for many common operations.
File indexing now uses less memory when crawling large folders, and has faster multimedia metadata extraction.
Users with monitors directly attached to a discrete graphics card will experience improved performance and stability.
In Files, significant performance improvements have been made to folder load time and scroll rendering. These enhancements primarily apply to folders which contain a lot of thumbnails. In testing they resulted in a ×5 speed increase when loading, and a ×10 rendering speed increase for scrolling.
Optimizations in the latest GTK version result in faster performance when app interfaces are created and resized.

Enhanced Image Viewer

GNOME introduced a new default image viewer back in version 45. For GNOME 48 this new app has received a number of exciting updates. The main change in 48 is the introduction of a new image editing feature, which allows cropping, rotating and flipping images. We are sure that these new capabilities will be incredibly helpful and convenient for simple editing tasks.

The image viewer’s zoom controls have also been redesigned for GNOME 48. The new controls have a number of advantages, including the ability to return to the default zoom level with a single click, a menu to select from a set of predefined zoom levels, and an entry to manually enter a zoom level percentage.

This version of the image viewer also brings several experimental features, including support for RAW image formats, as well as support for additional metadata formats like XMP. (Note that availability of these features may vary depending on your distribution.)

These enhancements make the new image viewer more versatile and user-friendly, aligning with GNOME’s commitment to providing integrated and efficient tools.

New Fonts

GNOME has a new interface font in version 48, as well as a new monospace font. Named Adwaita Sans and Adwaita Mono, these new fonts look fantastic, and also have many practical advantages over the previous fonts, with better rendering, more extensive character coverage, and support for a range of modern font features.

Adwaita Sans is a customized version of the popular Inter typeface by Rasmus Andersson, and provides polished and versatile typography, optimized for high-density displays. Adwaita Mono is a custom build of the Iosevka typeface family. It is well-suited for terminal use and plain text editing, with excellent readability and incredibly extensive language coverage.

These new fonts improve visual harmony in GNOME while maintaining accessibility and aesthetic balance. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the creators of these two fantastic openly licensed typefaces, and encourage our users to support their work.

Digital Wellbeing

Another exciting enhancement in GNOME 48 is the debut of new Digital Wellbeing features. Designed to empower users to maintain healthy computing habits, the features include:

Screen Time Usage: view how much time you spend using the screen each day, and compare your recent usage with previous days and weeks.
Screen Limits: set a daily limit for your total screen time each day. A notification is shown when the limit is reached, and there is also an option to make the screen turn black and white.
Break Reminders: set reminders for yourself to take regular eyesight and movement breaks, according to standard healthcare recommendations.

All of these features can be found in the new Digital Wellbeing section of the Settings app.

Preserve Battery Health

GNOME 48 includes a new option which enhances the lifespan of the device’s battery. When enabled, battery charge is limited to 80% while the device is plugged in. Maintaining the battery change level at this reduced level keeps the battery working better for longer.

This new battery health preservation behavior can be enabled in the Power settings, in the new Battery Charging option. It is only available on hardware which supports the feature.

Decibels: A New Core Audio Player

GNOME 48 introduces Decibels, a minimalist audio player designed for playback of audio files. Decibels offers a clean interface with essential features, including a waveform display, which allows easy navigation through long files. The app also features playback speed control, which is useful for listening to spoken word, such as podcasts and interviews.

Unlike comprehensive music management applications, Decibels focuses on playing individual audio files without library or playlist functionality. This approach caters to users who require a simple tool for tasks like listening to recordings or sound samples.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Support

GNOME 48 is an important milestone for HDR support in GNOME, with the initial introduction of system level HDR support. This means that, if you have an HDR display, it is now possible to have HDR output shown from apps which support it. Currently the number of apps which support HDR is limited. However, work to extend HDR support is ongoing, and the availability of this feature is expected to increase in the future.

To enable HDR on supported hardware, turn it on using the new High Dynamic Range switch in the display settings. Since display brightness often cannot be controlled when HDR is turned on, the settings also include a software emulated brightness control.

Updated Text Editor

Text Editor has been refreshed with a cleaner and more focused interface for GNOME 48. The updated design introduces a streamlined header bar, consolidating options into a single menu for a more intuitive experience.

Document properties have been enhanced, now exposing the document type and allowing quick access to auto-formatting overrides, making it easier to adjust formatting settings on the fly.

For those working with code, the cursor position indicator has been relocated to an overlay in the main view, keeping essential information within easy reach without adding visual clutter. These refinements make Text Editor more efficient and pleasant to use.

And That’s Not All…

GNOME 48 includes many other changes. Here are just some of them.

Global shortcuts: apps can now create their own system-wide shortcuts. This is useful for cases when you want to control an app when not directly interacting with it, for example when recording screencasts. Apps must request permission to add global shortcuts, and global shortcuts can be removed from the Apps page in the Settings app.
Window placement improvements: new windows are now placed in the center of the screen by default, for a more natural and balanced layout. There have also been several improvements to window placement when using multiple displays.
Enhanced support for special function keys: if your keyboard includes Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, or Redo keys, they can now be used in entries and text fields. The Find key is now also supported in many contexts to initiate searches.
Contacts UI improvements: the layout of contact editing has been improved for better usability, and birthday editing is now adaptive, enhancing support for different devices.
Settings refinements: in Region and Language, the formats dialog has been updated for improved locale and format selection. The Power settings have also been restructured to aid navigation.
Orca screen reader on Wayland: Orca shortcuts now function correctly in GNOME with Wayland, including the use of the Caps Lock key as the Orca modifier key. This is a major step forward in making assistive technologies available with the default GNOME display manager.
Refined app interfaces: app interface colors have been slightly tweaked, buttons and entries are slightly more rounded, and banners and toasts have been restyled.
Maps modernization: Maps includes various interface enhancements, including updated spinners, animated star buttons, and a redesigned point of interest editing window.
Accessibility support in Web: accessible contents of web pages are now available when Web is running as a Flatpak. This is a major security enhancement for users of accessibility features.
Calendar refinements: the event editor dialog in Calendar has been significantly improved, with redesigned date/time scheduling, improved calendar selection, and the ability to set the timezone. Additionally, various other UX improvements and bug fixes have been implemented, and performance has been significantly improved when showing many events at once.

These enhancements reflect GNOME’s commitment to improving usability, accessibility, and performance across its applications and system components.

Welcome, Circle Friends!

GNOME Circle showcases a collection of outstanding apps designed for GNOME, backed and promoted by the GNOME project. Since the release of GNOME 47, these new additions have joined the lineup:

Welcome to these new members of the GNOME community!

Developer Experience

GNOME 48 brings a range of new features and enhancements for developers working with the GNOME platform. Explore the developer section for detailed insights.

What's New for Developers New features for those working with GNOME technologies.

Getting GNOME 48

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 48 available very soon, and some already have development versions that include the new GNOME release. You can also try the GNOME OS image as a virtual machine, using the Boxes app.

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.