The GNOME Team announced the GNOME 45 RC release a day ago, just about 10 days before it’s going to stable!
Compare to the Gnome 45 Beta that was released few weeks ago, the top left ‘Activities’ button has been replaced with a workspace indicator. Just like before, user can still click on it to open the overview screen. And, it shows a ‘pill’ to indicate the current workspace, while displaying dots for all other workspaces.
The ‘Files’ (aka Nautilus file manager) and Gnome Control Center (the ‘Settings’) have been redesigned to look even more modern than before. The left pane and right contents now have different colors, and the hamburger menu (≡) is now placed in left of header-bar.
Other changes that are already there in the Beta release, include 2 new core apps. They are touch friendly “Loupe” image viewer, and new camera app “Snapshot“. Eyes of GNOME, Cheese, and Gnome photos (no replacement) are no longer core apps.
Other changes in GNOME 45 include:
- New shortcut key (Super + S) to toggle top-right system status menu, aka Quick Settings.
- Redesign ‘About’ and ‘Privacy’ settings page.
- Keyboard backlight toggle in quick settings
Hardware encoding for built-in screen recorder.- Camera indicator in system tray when device is active.
- Drag’n’drop to save web image to file.
- Document Scanner ported to GTK4.
- Improve file opening experience while sandboxed
For the official announcement, see HERE.
Get GNOME 45 RC
GNOME 45 will be default in Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora 39. You can try Ubuntu 23.10 daily .iso image or Fedora Rawhide for the new GNOME 45.
Or, download GNOME OS testing image from the link below. Though, it works only by installing into either Gnome Boxes VM or real machine.