#225 Volume Levels

November 14, 2025 • 14 Notes • Curated by Felix

Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from November 07 to November 14.

GNOME Core Apps and Libraries

Settings ↗

Configure various aspects of your GNOME desktop.

Zoey Ahmed 🏳️‍⚧️ 💙💜🩷 reports

GNOME Settings volume levels page received a change to fix applications inputs and outputs being hard to distinguish. This change separates the applications with outputs and inputs streams into separate lists, and adds a microphone icon to the inputs list.

Thank you to Hari Rana and Matthijs Velsink for helping me with my first MR, and Jeff Fortin for nudging me to persue this change!

Files ↗

Providing a simple and integrated way of managing your files and browsing your file system.

Tomasz Hołubowicz says

Nautilus now supports Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert for copying and pasting files, matching the behavior of other GTK applications, browsers, and file managers like Dolphin and Thunar. These CUA keybindings were previously only functional in Nautilus’s location bar, creating an inconsistency. The addition also benefits users with keyboards that have dedicated copy/paste keys, which typically emit these key combinations. These shortcuts are particularly useful for left-handed users and also allow the same bindings to work across applications, file managers, and terminal emulators, where Ctrl+Shift+C/V are typically required. The Ctrl+V paste shortcut is now also visible in the context menu.

GLib ↗

The low-level core library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK and GNOME.

Philip Withnall announces

In https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/merge_requests/4900, Philip Chimento has added a G_GNUC_FLAG_ENUM macro to GLib, which can be used in an enum definition to tell the compiler it’s for a flag type (i.e. enum values which can be bitwise combined). This allows for better error reporting, particularly when building with -Wswitch (which everyone should be using!).

So now we can have enums which look like this, for example:

typedef enum {
  G_CONVERTER_NO_FLAGS     = 0,         /*< nick=none >*/
  G_CONVERTER_INPUT_AT_END = (1 << 0),  /*< nick=input-at-end >*/
  G_CONVERTER_FLUSH        = (1 << 1)   /*< nick=flush >*/
} G_GNUC_FLAG_ENUM GConverterFlags;

GNOME Circle Apps and Libraries

Gaphor ↗

A simple UML and SysML modeling tool.

Dan Yeaw announces

Gaphor, the simple modeling tool, version 3.2.0 is now out! Some highlights include:

  • Troubleshooting info can now be found in the About dialog
  • Introduction of CSS classes: .item for all items you put on the diagram
  • Improved updates in Model Browser for attribute/parameter types
  • macOS: native window decorations and window menu

Grab the new version on Flathub.

Third Party Projects

Haydn reports

Typesetter, a minimalist desktop application for creating beautiful documents with Typst, is now available on Flathub.

Features include:

  • Adaptive, user-friendly interface: Focus on writing. Great for papers, reports, slides, books, and any structured writing.
  • Powered by Typst: A modern markup-based typesetting language, combining the simplicity of Markdown with the power of LaTeX.
  • Local-first: Your files stay on your machine. No cloud lock-in.
  • Package support: Works offline, but can fetch and update packages online when needed.
  • Automatic preview: See your rendered document update as you write.
  • Click-to-jump: Click on a part of the preview to jump to the corresponding position in the source file.
  • Centered scrolling: Keeps your writing visually anchored as you type.
  • Syntax highlighting: Makes your documents easier to read and edit.
  • Fast and native: Built in Rust and GTK following the GNOME human interface guidelines.

Get Typesetter on Flathub

Vladimir Kosolapov announces

Lenspect 1.0.2 has just been released on Flathub

This version features some quality-of-life improvements:

  • Improved drag-and-drop design
  • Increased file size limit to 650MB
  • Added more result items from VirusTotal
  • Added notifications for background scans
  • Added file opener integration
  • Added key storage using secrets provider

Check out the project on GitHub

GNOME Websites

Sophie (she/her) reports

The API to access information about GNOME projects has moved from apps.gnome.org to static.gnome.org/catalog. Everything based on the old API links has to move to the new links. The format of the API also slightly changed.

Pages like apps.gnome.org, welcome.gnome.org, developer.gnome.org/components/, and others are based on the API data. The separation will help with maintainability of the code.

More information can be found in the catalog’s git repository.

Shell Extensions

Dudu Maroja reports

The 2 Wallpapers GNOME extension is a neat tool that changes your wallpaper whenever you open a window. You can choose to set a darker, blurry, desaturated, or completely different image, whatever suits your preference. This extension was designed to help you focus on your active windows while letting your desktop shine when you want it.

The main idea behind this extension is to allow the use of transparent windows without relying on heavy processing or on-the-fly effects like blur, which can consume too much battery or GPU resources.

Grab it here: 2 Wallpapers Extension

dagimg-dot says

I have been working on Veil - a modern successor to the Hide items extension. which lets you hide all or chosen items on the gnome panel with auto-hide feature and smooth animations. you can check out the demo on GNOME’s reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/1orr1co/veil_a_cleaner_quieter_gnome_panel_hide_items/

Dmy3k announces

Adaptive Brightness Extension

This week the extension received a big update to preferences UI.

Interactive Brightness Configuration

  • You can now customize how your screen brightness responds to different lighting conditions using an easy-to-use graphical interface
  • Configure brightness levels for 5 different light ranges (from night to bright outdoor)
  • See a visual graph showing your brightness curve

Improved Settings Layout

  • Settings are now organized into 3 clear tabs: Calibration, Preview, and Keyboard
  • Each lighting condition can be expanded to adjust its range and brightness level
  • Live preview shows you exactly how brightness will respond to ambient light

Better Keyboard Backlight Control

  • Choose specific lighting conditions where keyboard backlight turns on (instead of just on/off)

Available at extensions.gnome.org and github.

Miscellaneous

GNOME OS ↗

The GNOME operating system, development and testing platform

Ada Magicat ❤️🧡🤍🩷💜 reports

Tulip Blossom from Project Bluefin has been working on building bootc images of different Linux systems, including GNOME OS. To ensure bootc users have the best experience possible with our system, Jordan Petridis and Valentin David from the GNOME OS team are working on building an OCI image that can be directly used by bootc. It is currently a work in progress, but we expect to land it soon. This collaboration is a great opportunity to expand our community, contributor base and share our vision for how to build operating systems.

Note that this does not represent a change in our plans for GNOME OS itself; It will continue using the same systemd tools for deploying and updating the system.

Ada Magicat ❤️🧡🤍🩷💜 reports

In Ignacy’s update on his Digital Wellbeing work this week, you might have noticed he shared the progress of his work in a complete system image. That image is based on GNOME OS and built on the same infrastructure as our main images.

This shows the power of GNOME OS as a development platform, especially for features that involve changes in many different parts of our stack. It also allows anyone with a machine, virtual or physical, to test these new features easier than ever before.

We hope to further improve our tools so that they are useful to more developers and make it easier and more convenient to test changes like this.

GNOME Foundation

Allan Day says

Another weekly Foundation update is available this week, with a summary of everything that’s been happening at the GNOME Foundation. It’s been a mixed week, with a Board meeting, ongoing finance work, GNOME.Asia preparations, and digital wellbeing planning.

Digital Wellbeing Project ↗

Ignacy Kuchciński (ignapk) announces

As part of the Digital Wellbeing project, sponsored by the GNOME Foundation, there is an initiative to redesign the Parental Controls to bring it on par with modern GNOME apps and implement new features such as Screen Time monitoring, Bedtime Schedule and Web Filtering. Recently the child account overview gained screen time usage information, the Screen Time page was added with session limits controls, the wellbeing panel in Settings was integrated with parental controls, and screen limits were introduced in the Shell. There’s more to come, see https://blogs.gnome.org/ignapk/2025/11/10/digital-wellbeing-contract-screen-time-limits/ for more information.

That’s all for this week!

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #thisweek:gnome.org with updates on your own projects!