The GNOME project has released their newest major version, GNOME 47, and while it’s not the most groundbreaking release, there’s still a ton of good stuff in here. Two features really stand our, with the first one being the addition of accent colours. Instead of being locked into the default GNOME blue accent colour, you can now choose between a variety of colours, which is a very welcome addition. I use the accent colour feature on all my computers, and since I run KDE, I also have this nifty KDE feature where it’ll select an accent colour automatically based on your wallpaper.
No, this isn’t a groundbreaking feature, but considering GNOME’s tendency towards not allowing any customisation, this is simply very welcome.
A much more substantial feature comes in the form of brand new open/save file dialogs, and I’m sure even the GNOME developers themselves are collectively sighing in relief about this one. GNOME’s open/save dialogs were so bad they became a meme, and now they’re finally well and truly fixed, thanks to effectively removing the old ones and adding new ones based on the GNOME Files file manager.
GNOME 47 comes with brand new file open and save file dialogs. The new dialogs are a major upgrade compared with the previous versions, and are based on the existing Files app rather than being a separate codebase. This results in the new dialogs having a much more complete set of features compared with the old open and save dialogs. With the new dialogs you can zoom the view, change the sort order in the icon view, rename files and folders, preview files, and more.
↫ GNOME 47 release notes
And yes, this includes thumbnails.
There’s tons more in GNOME 47, like a new design for dialog windows that look and feel more like they belong on a mobile UI, tons of improvements to Files, the Settings application, GNOME Online Accounts, Web, and more. GNOME 47 will make its way to your distribution of choice soon enough, but of course, you can always build and install it yourself if you’re so inclined.
Good to see. The question is whether you can also delete them. If so, they’ll finally have caught up to Windows 9x. (Not a dig on Windows 9x. I have a vintage thin client adapted to run 98SE hanging off the KVM switch on this desk.)
…bit of a shame Inkscape (one of the only GTK apps I haven’t yet found a suitable replacement for) is dragging its heels on actually using GtkFileChooserNative so I can just let the KDE portal host handle it though. That’d be even better.
But the entire DE still wastes so much space on a 1920 x 1080 display it’s practically unusable. Do the gnome devs all have poor eyesight?
Bold of you to assume they’ve ever seen the abomination they created.
Wow! Finally they got thumbnails in the file picker after 20 years and catching up with Windows 95 and KDE 1!
This just eternally confuses me. The old ones were fine. The colors were fine. If there were a real UX deficit it would have been fixed years ago.
However! However, I’m not paying them so if they want to change the colors that’s great. Have fun, I’ll still use it. I’d rather they focus on being more kind with other GTK users, and work towards removing the apparent barrier that is libadwaita, but again not my call. I’ll still use it.
No way that the Gnome Devs care what other GTK users think, they’ll force adwaita on us all, they claim because broken themes exist we shouldn’t have theming. They’ll break the entire ecosystem on the basis of this belief