GNOME 48 arrives with tons of new features including new fonts

GNOME 48 has just been unveiled, and it doesn’t disappoint. The new version is absolutely jam-packed with new features such as notification stacking, performance improvements, basic editing tools in Image Viewer, and notably, brand new fonts called Adwaita Sans and Adwaita Mono – the font change is the first time that the desktop environment’s fonts have been changed since version 3.0, which came out in 2011.

Here is an overview of the new features in GNOME 48:

Major Updates

• Notification Stacking: Groups notifications from the same app into expandable stacks for better organization.
• Performance Improvements:
  • Dynamic triple buffering for smoother animations and fewer skipped frames.
  • Reduced CPU and memory usage in GNOME’s JavaScript engine.
  • Faster file indexing and multimedia metadata extraction.
  • Performance boosts in Files (×5 speed increase for loading, ×10 for scrolling).
  • GTK optimizations for faster app interface creation and resizing.

New and Updated Apps

• Enhanced Image Viewer:
  • Adds cropping, rotating, and flipping tools.
  • Redesigned zoom controls and support for RAW and XMP metadata.
• New Fonts:
  • Adwaita Sans (Inter-based) for UI text.
  • Adwaita Mono (Iosevka-based) for terminals and coding.
• Digital Wellbeing:
  • Screen Time Usage tracking.
  • Screen Limits with grayscale mode.
  • Break Reminders for eye and movement breaks.
• Battery Health Preservation: Limits charge to 80% to extend battery lifespan.
• Decibels Audio Player: Simple waveform-based player with playback speed control.
• HDR Support: Initial support for HDR displays with software brightness control.

UI & Functionality Improvements

• Updated Text Editor:
  • Cleaner interface with a streamlined header.
  • Enhanced document properties and auto-formatting.
  • Improved code cursor position display.
• Global Shortcuts: Apps can request system-wide keyboard shortcuts.
• Better Window Placement: New windows now open centered by default.
• Special Function Keys Support: Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo, and Find keys are now usable.
• Contacts & Calendar UI Tweaks: Improved layouts, better event scheduling.
• Orca Screen Reader Support on Wayland: Improved accessibility features.
• GNOME Maps, Web, and other apps: UI modernizations, security improvements, and accessibility enhancements.

New GNOME Circle Apps

• Drum Machine
• Iotas
• Keypunch
• Exercise Timer

The best way to use GNOME 48 is to wait for a Linux distribution to ship with it. One of the first distros that will include it will be Fedora 42. The beta of Fedora 42 came out this week and the final release is expected in mid-April. If you use non-LTS versions of Ubuntu, then Ubuntu 25.04 will include GNOME 48 too.