The latest and greatest GNOME 45 “Riga” desktop environment series has received a new update today, GNOME 45.2, which brings more bug fixes, performance improvements, and updated translations to the GNOME users.
GNOME 45.2 comes more than five weeks after GNOME 45.1 and includes several enhancements to the GNOME Shell component, such as optimizing application search, improving high-contrast styling, and adding support for a “version-name” field in extension metainfo. GNOME Shell extensions can now use a custom “version-name” string, and the preferences dialog will only show up after an extension has been loaded. A performance issue caused by repeated signal leaks and an issue with the on-screen keyboard backspace getting stuck have also been fixed, along with arrow navigation in search results.
The Mutter window and composite manager has also been updated in GNOME 45.2 to improve support for tablet devices on X11 and to disable the hardware cursor when inhibited by the backend. A crash and a couple of other bugs have also been solved in Mutter 45.2.
The Nautilus (Files) file manager has received some new features and fixes in GNOME 45.2, such as support for detecting unmount on some non-native mounts, support for expanding types and sizes in the Properties dialog, and fixes for two crashes that occurred when viewing image properties and when reconnecting to a remote server.
Loupe 45.2 image viewer is also part of the GNOME 45.2 release and comes with improved ordering of images after deleting images, improved keyboard shortcuts to show the swipe gestures, and the ability to show an image when reloading it after an error.
GNOME Sudoku 45.3 board game has also been updated in GNOME 45.2 to help colorblind users by adjusting the red warning color to be brighter, and File Roller (Archive Manager) 43.1 has also been improved to support DEB package and Google Drive better.
The gnome-bluetooth 42.7 component has also been improved in GNOME 45.2 to fix bugs that prevented the Obex Push server from automatically accepting files from paired devices, which could cause the Connection switch on attached devices to look out of sync with the connection state.
The Window List and Workspace Indicator extensions have also been improved to allow buttons to be clickable at the screen edge and to fix initial preview visibility. The GNOME Text Editor 45.1 app has also been updated to fix row styling in preferences and to improve comparing of the changes in a document after a “Save As” operation.
The xdg-desktop-portal-gnome 45.1 component is also included in GNOME 45.2 and brings the ability to send remote file URIs as local FUSE URIs, support for exposing org.gnome.desktop.calendar through the Settings portal, various fixes to screencast and input capture, and other changes.
Some apps, such as GNOME Software, GNOME Maps, and GNOME Disks, have also been updated in GNOME 45.2, but with very small changes or updated translations. You can find more details in the full changelog.
GNOME 45.2 will soon be available in the stable software repositories of various popular GNU/Linux distributions, so make sure that you update your installations regularly. The next point release, GNOME 45.3, is expected to arrive in early January 2024, along with the alpha version of GNOME 46.