GNOME 44.1 Arrives with Bug, App & Memory Leak Fixes

GNOME 44.1 on Fedora 38 Workstation

To me, it feels like only yesterday that GNOME 44 was released but it has in fact been a month — and the first point release is now available.

GNOME 44.1 doesn’t deliver any new features (as expected) but it does bring us bug fixes (as expected). Basically, a welcome round of refinement to an already well-received release.

GNOME Shell picks up a bevvy of buffs, including a subtitle in the new Background Apps section of Quick Settings; better alignment of placeholder items in the Bluetooth Quick Settings menu; and a fix regarding recording screenshots not showing in the Recent Items menu.

  • Only show network subtitles if they don’t match the title
  • Fix accessible names in VPN menu
  • Fixes and improvements to the light theme variant
  • Use consistent naming for “Power Mode” toggle
  • Fix support for transparent colors in symbolic SVGs
  • Fix notifications getting stuck indefinitely
  • Memory leak fixes

Elsewhere, Mutter fixes resizing windows via keyboard; improves screencast support; bags better initial full-screen state for server-side decorated windows; and nixes artefacts appearing in window titlebars on some hardware.

Nautilus, aka Files, is able to extract .tar.zst and .zstd archives in GNOME 44.1; lets you pasted into expanded folders; and automatically dismiss in-window toasts on undo operations.

Other changes:

  • Calendar: preserve week-view zoom levels between session
  • Calendar: better keyboard navigation of event preview popover
  • EOG: Fix animated WebPs causing crash
  • Boxes: always enable the boot menu option
  • Boxes: fix 3D acceleration not sticking at startup
  • GNOME Settings Daemon: connect to light sensors asynchronously
  • Display Settings: configure and apply settings to all monitors at once
  • Maps: “Send to” dialog fix

You can view a full log of all changes in GNOME 44.1 here.

For users of Arch Linux (and distributions based on it) this point release is important as marks the milestone at which maintainers package up and push out the GNOME 44 release for folks to upgrade to.

Users of Ubuntu 23.04 and Fedora 38 can expect to get this update in the next few days.