The latest version of GNOME 3 has been released yesterday. Above all, version 3.38 contains a sizeable set of improvements, from a re-arrangeable app grid and fingerprint login.
GNOME 3.38 showcases a new Tour application, highlighting the main functionality of the desktop and providing first time users a nice welcome to GNOME.
Settings can now manage parental controls for Standard user accounts through the new Parental Controls option in the Users section. In other words, installed applications can be filtered from the application overview, preventing them from being launched by the managed user.
Parental Controls also integrates with existing Software application restrictions, allowing you to select which applications can be installed.
Better Multi-Monitor Support. GNOME Shell can now drive multiple monitors with different refresh rates, making sure that you get the best possible experience out of your desktop. In addition to, this improvement is only available in Wayland sessions.
A Better Browsing Experience. GNOME Web now features Intelligent Tracking Prevention, a collection of advanced mitigations designed to protect users from cross-site tracking. Web has received a number of other improvements, including new support for importing passwords and bookmarks from Google Chrome. Also a redesigned password manager and the ability to mute or unmute individual tabs. Moreover, there is an redesigned preferences and history dialogs. To reduce annoyance, videos that play sound are now blocked from automatically playing by default. The new permissions allow controlling video autoplay policy for each website you visit.
Also the Add World Clock dialog has been redesigned. Additionally, it is now possible to set a snooze and ring duration for alarms.
Screenshot and Sound Recorder have been redesigned to provide a more polished and elegant experience.
Other GNOME 3.38 features
As usual, there are also many other smaller improvements in this GNOME 3.38. Here are some of them:
- Calculator, Cheese, Tali, Sudoku, Robots, Quadrapassel, and Nibbles all feature new icons.
- Now you can share Wi-Fi hotspot via QR code
- Terminal now uses an updated text color scheme. In addition to, the new colors look better and are easier to read thanks to improved color contrast.
- Photos has gained a new image filter, Trencin, very similar to Instagram’s Clarendon filter.
- The system menu has a new visible Restart option, which also can be used to go to the Boot menu by holding down the Alt key.
- Fractal has improved video playback in the message history. Previews of videos are now shown directly in the message history, and clicking on a video will open it in a larger viewer. Audio files are now seekable in the improved audio file player. Edited messages are now edited in place, with an icon to indicate the edited status, while redacted messages are now deleted from the message history entirely.
You can see many of the GNOME 3.38 improvements listed above in the screenshots below:
For more details on this release do check out the release notes or watch the official release video. In addition, the next major GNOME release is scheduled for March 2021.
