A month after the release of v49 of the desktop environment, the first bugfix update, GNOME 49.1, is now available to users. Two things immediately stand out: GNOME Shell and Mutter have received a series of refinements to improve overall desktop responsiveness.
More specifically, Mutter now handles window resizing and moving more reliably, fixes several focus and keyboard issues, and smooths out multi-touch interactions on X11.
At the same time, GNOME Shell patches several visual and usability glitches, including freezes when adjusting quick settings sliders on touchscreens, animation hiccups during overview searches, and a few accessibility bugs in the login screen and screenshot UI.
Other key modules have been bumped as well. GDM 49.1 fixes a lock-up problem that could leave GNOME Shell hanging during login, while GNOME Control Center gets updates to its appearance, network, and user settings panels.
On the apps side, Nautilus 49.1 resolves several crashes and drag-and-drop issues, and Epiphany improves address bar behavior, fixes Unicode display problems, and corrects memory handling.
The update also brings GTK 4.20.2 with multiple backported fixes, including one that restores proper rendering for text shadows and another that improves Wayland input handling.
On the theming side, libadwaita 1.8.1 enhances touchscreen support and accessibility in interface components like ComboRow and EntryRow, while improving behavior in right-to-left layouts and other environments.
Regarding accessibility, Orca 49.3 introduces fixes for web content navigation, improves speech handling in GTK4 apps, and reduces input lag when processing large amounts of accessibility events. Lastly, gnome-remote-desktop resolves a long-standing issue with image corruption on NVIDIA GPUs.
For more information, visit the official announcement or review all the changes here.
GNOME 49.1 desktop environment is expected to land in the repos of distributions already offering version 49 over the following weeks. As usual, rolling-release ones will be the first to push it out to their users.
