Introducing GNOME 49, “Brescia”

September 17, 2025

The GNOME project is delighted to unveil GNOME 49, a milestone that reflects six months of collective effort from our vibrant community. A heartfelt thank you goes to everyone who helped shape this release.

We code named the release “Brescia”, after a beautiful Italian city that hosted this year’s GUADEC. Let’s explore what’s new and improved in this edition.

Showtime becomes Video Player

In GNOME 49, Showtime replaces the long-standing Totem as the default GNOME video player app, bringing a sleek, modern experience built on GTK 4 and Libadwaita instead of Totem’s aging GTK 3 base.

The new Video Player prioritizes a distraction-free viewing experience: its chromeless window hides controls during playback and fades them back in only when needed. It supports essential features like adjustable playback speed, multiple audio and subtitle tracks, rotating video, and screenshot capture — all the core functionality users expect.

New Document Viewer

Papers replaces the long-serving Evince as the default Document Viewer. Originally based on Evince code, Papers delivers a modernized design built with GTK 4 and Libadwaita, instead of Evince’s older GTK 3 foundation.

Papers brings improved performance and a refreshed user interface, with a streamlined PDF annotation feature being one particular highlight. It supports viewing, searching, annotating, and organizing formats like PDF, DjVu, TIFF, and comic-book archives (CBR, CBZ, CBT, CB7), with added features such as digital signature integration.

Calendar

Calendar’s interface has undergone significant accessibility enhancements for people with disabilities. These improvements have reached a level that allows us to confidently announce that Calendar is now accessible to individuals who rely exclusively on keyboard navigation, as well as to those who use assistive technologies.

Calendar sees a number of improvements in GNOME 49. The most visible change is the reorganized interface, which is now more flexible, and allows the window to adapt to different window sizes. It also makes it possible to manually hide the sidebar, which is ideal for smaller screens or tiled windows.

Other improvements include:

• Export events to file: you can now export events as .ics files, for easy sharing and backup.
• Enhanced readability: event information is now easier to read, thanks to visual style changes.

Calendar keeps getting better and better.

Web

GNOME’s browser has received a major round of improvements and bug fixes in this release, with over 100 issues resolved and several new features added. Highlights include:

• Better ad blocking: with support for optional regional ad block lists.
• Site menu: the URL entry has a new site specific menu with actions related to the open website.
• Estimated reading time: this handy feature in reader mode helps you know how long an article might take to read.
• Enhanced security features: with improved support for smartcards, a dedicated password management dialog, and a redesigned security dialog.
• Improved web app controls: web apps can now be quit or uninstalled directly from their menu.
• OpenSearch integration: when visiting a site that supports OpenSearch, a button now appears in the address entry, allowing you to add it as a search engine. Using these engines also provides live search suggestions.
• More powerful in-page search: this now has support for case-sensitive and whole-word matches.
• Bookmark management: bookmarks are easier to manage with a new editing mode.

Maps

Maps has gained some handy improvements in GNOME 49!

• Localized icons: metro and railway stations now display with localized icons in some regions, making it easier to recognize transit stops at a glance. Highway shields are also shown when viewing information about roads, for some countries.
• Interactive labels: labels such as street names and house numbers are now interactive — clicking them will bring up the place information, letting you quickly learn more about a location or add it to your favorites.
• OpenStreetMap profile pictures: are now shown in the account dialog.

Software

Version 49 of the Software app focuses heavily on performance improvements. One major bottleneck has been how the app store parses large amounts of data from Flatpak repositories like Flathub. This release introduces optimizations that greatly reduce memory usage and speed up the parsing process. The result is a snappier, more responsive experience when browsing and searching for apps, especially on systems with limited resources.

Wallpapers

GNOME 49 introduces a vibrant new wallpaper catalog that’s specifically engineered for high‑dynamic‑range (HDR) displays and the Display P3 color space. These HDR beautiful wallpapers are possible due to enhanced color-management in GNOME’s window manager (Mutter), which allows it to render wallpapers with their full 16‑bit‑per‑channel RGB depth, giving an unprecedented range of colors and contrast. Image loading backend (Glycin) has also been improved with regard to performance of the color-managed pipelines.

New Additions

Enhanced Remote Desktop

GNOME’s built-in remote desktop capabilities have been extended for version 49, providing more capabilities for those connecting to their GNOME desktops from elsewhere.

• Multitouch input support: multitouch input can now be forwarded from a client to a remote GNOME session. This can be used with client devices that have a touchscreen.
• Relative mouse input: this is required by some apps and games, and is particularly relevant to those playing games over a remote connection.
• Extended virtual monitors: it is now possible to have additional virtual monitors when using GNOME as a remote desktop. Additional displays can be added to the remote desktop session from the remote desktop client, even when there aren’t additional displays physically present.

Other Improvements

GNOME 49 also brings a wide range of smaller but meaningful enhancements across the desktop:

• Lock screen media controls: media controls are now displayed on the lock screen, making it possible to pause playback or skip a track without needing to unlock.
• New accessibility menu: the login screen now features a more prominent accessibility menu, making assistive technologies easier to access.
• Do Not Disturb toggle: Do Not Disturb has been moved from the notifications list to the Quick Settings, for a more consistent experience.
• Trash like you mean it: trash handling has been improved behind the scenes, making it more reliable.
• Power connected status: the battery icon in the top bar now indicates when the computer is connected to power and is not charging, as can happen when Preserve Battery Health is enabled. This makes it possible to verify that the computer is correctly connected to the power, despite it not charging.
• HDR brightness controls: it is now possible to change the display brightness in the Quick Settings when HDR is enabled. These new HDR brightness controls support external displays, and allow multiple displays to be adjusted at the same time.
• Reboot/shutdown from the lock screen: a new gsetting allows enabling the reboot and shutdown options on the lock screen. To use it, run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver restart-enabled true from the command line.
• Enhanced security: image loading in GTK apps is now sandboxed, to help prevent security exploits.

GNOME Circle

Two new apps have joined GNOME Circle in this release. First there is Mahjongg, which is a fantastic take on the classic tile-based game.

Second, Wordbook, provides a great dictionary app, which is powered by WordNet and eSpeak. Together, these new apps expand the ecosystem of curated, high-quality GNOME applications.

Developer Experience

GNOME 49 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 49

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 49 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.

Thanks for Your Support ❤️

This release wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing contributions, feedback, and encouragement from our community. If you’d like to help us continue improving, please consider supporting the project financially. Every donation helps us dedicate more time and resources to building something better for everyone. Donate

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.