GNOME 47 "Denver" arrives with customizable accent colors and enhanced UI

GNOME 47

The GNOME project has just released the latest version of its GNOME desktop, GNOME 47 "Denver". This is a pretty big update with the introduction of accent colors, various system enhancements, new open and save file dialogs, and improved Files, Settings, Web, and Calendar apps.

Aside from those changes, there are some smaller improvements such as a refreshed Disk Usage Analyzer, refreshed Wait cursors, vector tiles in Maps by default, improved app recommendations in Software, and public transport routing in Maps.

The headline feature in this update is support for accent colors. If you've used Ubuntu since it switched to GNOME, you may have already tried accent colors. This feature is now native to GNOME, instead of being bolted on after by Canonical. There are nine accent colors going right across the color spectrum for you to make GNOME your own.

GNOME 47 is going to be an important update for you if your computer has a smaller screen. It comes with optimizations for icons and interface elements so that everything looks better on lower-resolution displays. On these screens, GNOME will automatically scale icons to appear larger and more visually accessible.

One of the most common actions people do on their computer, no matter whether they're on Windows, Mac, or Linux is to interact with open and safe file dialog windows. In GNOME 47, users will see brand-new file dialogs that have a more complete set of features. The new dialog windows let you zoom the view, change the sort order in the icon view, rename files and folders, preview files, and more. These new dialogs also look and behave the same way as what you'd expect when opening the Files app, for example. the locations in the sidebar are consistent, and the search returns the same results in the same order.

One of the first Linux distributions that will ship with GNOME 47 will be Fedora 41, which is due to be released next month. Ubuntu 24.10, which is also due out next month, will also ship with GNOME 47. you can find the full release notes here.