The GNOME Project has released GNOME 50.2, the second maintenance update for the GNOME 50 desktop environment series. Here are the main points to note.
GNOME Shell has been updated from version 50.0 to 50.2 with numerous fixes. These address screenshot area selection at monitor edges, screen reader behavior, and rate control for VA-API H.264 screencast pipelines.
Additional fixes resolve issues with USB autorun notifications, the overview search spinner, keyboard layout handling when xkb-options change, and the login screen accessibility menu.
It’s worth noting also that the audio input indicator in GNOME Shell now appears only during active audio recording. Plus, the power-off and restart dialog includes a fix for the “Install Updates” checkbox.
Mutter, GNOME’s window manager and Wayland compositor, is now at version 50.1, and Nautilus has been updated to 50.2.2. GNOME Software 50.2 resolves an issue where duplicate web apps with the same URL appeared as a single entry and corrects the Incompatible Software dialog behavior.
GDM 50.1 includes several session-related fixes. The display manager now better handles conflicting graphical sessions started outside GDM, such as ThinLinc or TigerVNC. It also resolves a Plymouth hang on headless systems, corrects the XDG_SESSION_TYPE value for X11 sessions, and fixes an XDG_DATA_DIRS issue that could prevent GNOME Shell from locating its files in certain setups.
Additionally, GTK has been updated from 4.22.2 to 4.22.4, as this release includes backported bug fixes, a popover correction, improvements to input panel positioning, better handling of reduced-motion settings under Wayland, dark theme adjustments, and several Vulkan-related fixes from the 4.22 release series.
GNOME Remote Desktop 50.1 resolves a black screen issue on some systems with NVIDIA GPUs. Orca, GNOME’s screen reader, is now at version 50.2. The accessibility stack also includes at-spi2-core 2.60.4, which fixes application-specific event listener deregistration and pointer-query handling.
Additional updated components are Epiphany 50.4, Evolution Data Server 3.60.2, GNOME Control Center 50.2, GNOME Maps 50.1, GNOME Text Editor 50.1, libadwaita 1.9.1, librsvg 2.62.2, Papers 50.2, and Rygel 45.2.
For more information, visit the announcement or review all the changes here.
Additionally, the GNOME project has released GNOME 49.7, as well as a bugfix update for the previous GNOME 49 series (now old-stable).
