The release candidate (RC) of GNOME Desktop 49 is out for testing purpose!

This is the final development release for GNOME 49, while the stable release is planned for September 17th. It added some new features, various bug-fixes, and improvements.

As you may know, GNOME 49 removed the ‘Gnome on Xorg’ session since the alpha release, which as well disabled X11 sessions in GDM.

In this RC release, it re-enabled X11 by default in GDM, meaning there’s NO “Gnome on Xorg”, but it still can load other X11 based desktop sessions, e.g., XFCE, MATE, and Cinnamon, from the login screen.

GDM 49 re-enabled ability to load other X11 desktop sessions.

Glycin, the image loading library, now has experimental JPEG 2000 loading support, though it’s disabled by default. And, since this RC, the GNOME background images are now loading by this library.

For GNOME Remote Desktop, the release added support for relative mouse motion events, which is commonly used in 3D apps, e.g., video games or design software, to control a virtual camera or object orientation.

The gnome-remote-desktop also added support for extending the desktop with a virtual monitor. I’m not sure how it differs to the virtual monitor functionality introduced since GNOME 42, but it should make mouse movement with embedded cursors more performant. See the merge request for details.

Other changes include:

• Add button in Accessibility to launch Orca preferences
• Disable the org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver proxy service on the login screen
• Indicate “Battery Health” (battery charge limit) status.
• F5 and Ctrl+R keyboard shortcuts to refresh Gnome Weather.
• Insert ~/ instead of ~ in Nautilus path-bar when pressing ~.
• Add Advertise Broadcast RGB support, and more.

And, below are the big changes introduced in last Beta & Alpha releases:

• Added Showtime video player and Papers document viewer
• Use glycin as backend for decoding and saving images for gdk-pixbuf and image viewer.
• Move “Do Not Distrub” to top-right Quick Settings menu.
• Added configuration for pointing stick (aka TrackPoint)
• Support relative dials on tablet pads.
• Option to disable “Super” (Windows key) shortcut key.
• Add music playback control in lock screen.
• Option to show “Restart” and “Power-Off” menu options to the lock screen.
• Per-monitor brightness control in Quick Settings.
• Hardware accelerated video encoding for Camera app.
• Add ‘Donate’ button in About page.

How to Get GNOME 49 RC

GNOME provides an installer image for testing and porting extensions. Along with the announcement, they are available via the link below:

For Ubuntu, GNOME 49 RC has been added for Ubuntu 25.10 Deb build, just launch “Software Updater” and install all available updates to get it. For Arch Linux, it has been added into the GNOME Unstable repository.