A month and a half after the release of v49.2 of the desktop environment, the third bugfix update, GNOME 49.3, is now available to users, described by the devs as a “boring” bugfix update to the stable GNOME 49 series.
In other words, no new features are introduced, and the changes apply only to updated modules shipped with the release.
A key part of the update is the inclusion of GLib 2.86.3, which addresses several security vulnerabilities of varying severity. These include multiple integer overflow and buffer handling issues affecting URI escaping, GVariant parsing, and file attribute processing.
Moreover, libadwaita 1.8.3 delivers a collection of crash fixes, accessibility corrections, and small usability refinements across several widgets and dialogs.
Several user-facing applications receive targeted fixes. GNOME Calendar corrects timezone handling for new events and improves recurrence behavior. GNOME Maps resolves a freeze that can occur when moving the application window between displays while a route is displayed. GNOME Console includes a crash fix that improves reliability during everyday terminal use.
GNOME Control Center 49.3 brings a collection of practical refinements across multiple panels. Networking behavior is corrected to properly disable Wi-Fi on single-device systems, timezone selection dialogs are made more reliable, keyboard configuration dialogs are adjusted for better usability, and regional settings now apply locale variables consistently.
Other desktop applications and utilities, including GNOME Online Accounts, GNOME Remote Desktop, Loupe image viewer, Snapshot camera app, and Rygel media server, receive incremental bug fixes and translation updates. Accessibility improvements also continue through updates to Orca, refining screen reader behavior and reducing verbosity issues in web content.
Major components of the GNOME 49 stack, including GNOME Shell, Mutter, GTK, Nautilus, and Epiphany, remain unchanged in this release.
For more information, visit the announcement or review all the changes here.
For users already on GNOME 49, updating to GNOME 49.3 is straightforward through their distribution’s regular update mechanism.
