GNOME 49 “Brescia” Desktop Environment Officially Released, Here’s What’s New

posted by Marius Nestor on Sep 17, 2025,
updated Sep 22, 2025

Highlights of GNOME 49 include a new “Do Not Disturb” toggle in Quick Settings, a dedicated Accessibility menu in the login screen, support for handling unknown power profiles in the Quick Settings menu, support for YUV422 and YUV444 (HDR) colour spaces, support for passive screen casts, and support for async keyboard map settings.

GNOME 49 also introduces support for media controls, restart, and shutdown actions on the lock screen, support for dynamic users for greeter sessions in the GNOME Display Manager (GDM), and support for per-monitor brightness sliders in Quick Settings on multi-monitor setups.

Read on

More Updates:

• GNOME 49 released with new video player, document viewer, improved app store and disabled X11 session | GamingOnLinux

  GNOME 49 "Brescia" has been officially released today with improvements big and small across this popular Linux desktop environment.

  Some of the highlights you can expect to see include Showtime their fancy new video player, that they say "prioritizes a distraction-free viewing experience" with some essential features like adjustable playback speed, multiple audio and subtitle tracks, rotating video, and screenshot capture. Another new app with Papers as their new document viewer that supports "viewing, searching, annotating, and organizing formats like PDF, DjVu, TIFF, and comic-book archives (CBR, CBZ, CBT, CB7), with added features such as digital signature integration".

• GNOME 49 Officially Released, This is What's New - OMG! Ubuntu

  GNOME 49 features new default apps, new lock screen features, smoother interface animations and a glut of usability and accessibility improvements.

  But it’s a feature removal which makes makes this release rather more notable.

  GNOME 49 is the first version of the desktop to not support running on Xorg/X11 by default.

  Distro makers and packagers can choose to re-enable X11 support in GNOME 49 at build-time, but the ‘official’ release has disabled it.

Linuxiac:

• GNOME 49 Desktop Environment Released, This Is What’s New

  Six months after the launch of version 48, GNOME 49 “Brescia,” named after the Italian city that hosted this year’s GUADEC conference, was released today and is now available for anyone interested in trying it.

  So let’s start with the novelties. One of the biggest shifts is in multimedia. The long-standing Totem video player has been replaced by Showtime, a new app built on GTK 4 and Libadwaita.

  According to devs, Showtime focuses on a distraction-free experience, hiding controls during playback until needed. It includes essentials like playback speed adjustment, multiple audio and subtitle tracks, video rotation, and screenshot capture.

LWN:

• GNOME 49 released

  Version 49 of the GNOME desktop environment has been released. Changes include new default video (Showtime) and PDF-viewing (Papers) applications, a number of calendar improvements, and updates to the Web, Maps, and Software applications.

It's FOSS:

• GNOME 49 Launches With New Apps, Nautilus Redesign, and GNOME Shell Upgrades

  I have been using GNOME as my daily desktop since late 2022. It’s stable, responsive, and works well for both work stuff and media consumption. The newest release, GNOME 49, continues this trend with small but meaningful updates across apps, shell, and system features.

  It is a culmination of the Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate builds that appeared earlier, focusing on user-facing refinements rather than dramatic changes.

  So, let's dive in! 🤓

Late coverage:

• GNOME 49 Officially Released with New Video Player & Document Viewer

  GNOME developer team finally announced the 49 release of this popular GNU/Linux Desktop environment! If everything goes well, GNOME 49 will be the default desktop for Ubuntu 25.10, Fedora Workstation 43, and optional for Arch, Manjaro, etc GNU/Linux distributions.

Late coverage:

• GNOME 49 Is Finally Out: Here's What's New

  GNOME 49, codenamed "Brescia," has officially been released, bringing a lot of new features and improvements like a new video player, a new document viewer, and some awesome new wallpapers. You're going to see it rolling out to popular Linux distributions like Fedora 43 and Ubuntu 25.10 very soon.

  Showtime is now the default video player, replacing the old Totem app. The new Video Player is built on a more modern base (GTK 4 and Libadwaita), and it seems better at giving you a distraction-free viewing experience. It's got all the essentials you'd expect, like adjustable playback speed, multiple audio and subtitle tracks, and the ability to take screenshots. It's a much-needed upgrade that makes watching videos feel more straightforward.

  In a similar move, Papers is taking over as the default Document Viewer, replacing Evince. Like the new video player, it’s built with GTK 4 and Libadwaita, and it brings a cleaner design and better performance. Papers also has a cool new streamlined PDF annotation feature and can handle all the usual formats like PDFs, DjVu, and even comic-book archives.

  Speaking of improvements, the Calendar app got some serious love in this release. The developers have made it way more accessible for people who rely on keyboard navigation or assistive technologies. The interface is now more flexible, so it can adapt to different window sizes, and you can even hide the sidebar for smaller screens.