#271 Good News

October 23, 2026 • 9 Notes • Curated by Brage

Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from October 16 to October 23.

GNOME Circle Apps and Libraries

Jan Lukas announces

Newsflash 6.0 beta is available

Lots of internal changes to clean up caches, improve performance, lower peak memory consumption, avoid crashes. If you’re looking for user visible changes there is

  • Pdf Export using Typst
  • A new article list layout with larger thumbnails (the old layout is still available)
  • A re-designed article view menu (thanks Tobias Bernard)
  • Much improved Gtk HTML view
  • Its now possible to continue listening to a podcast while browsing other content

Lots of other goodies in the complete changelog. Check it out on the flathub beta channel.

GNOME Core Apps and Libraries

GTK ↗

Cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.

Felix reports

This week, my first contributions to GTK were merged!

GTK now implements the applicationShouldHandleReopen:hasVisibleWindows: delegate method on macOS. This method gets called when an app that is already running gets reactivated, for example when the user clicks its dock icon again, double-clicks the app in Finder, or clicks on the media controls in control center. This is important for apps that keep running after their window has been closed. A typical use case is a music player that continues playback in the background. Before this, reactivating such an app gave it no chance to respond, so there was no way to bring the window back. Now, the GtkApplication now receives the activate signal, just as it does on GNOME when an already running application gets launched again. Apps that already handle activate by presenting or recreating their main window will get the expected behavior on macOS now as well without any platform-specific code.

The second contribution is a small fix, which solves an issue that the native “traffic lights” controls (close, minimize and zoom) stayed visible, even when the window had asked for no window buttons to be shown.

Maybe some of you can guess which app needed these fixes :)

Web ↗

Web browser for the GNOME desktop.

adrian announces

A long-standing bug that caused the “unresponsive page” dialog to reappear forever when the page became responsive again while the dialog was shown has been fixed. As an additional refinement, the dialog will be closed automatically if WebKit reports that the page starts responding again.

Third Party Projects

Fractal ↗

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Kévin Commaille reports

Several upstream dependencies released security fixes so we bundled them into Fractal 14.2 to make sure that everything runs smoothly until the next release!

This version is available right now on Flathub.

As usual, you can also help make sure the next major version is solid by using Fractal Nightly. Help on fixing our remaining bugs is of course always appreciated!

Solitaire ↗

Play Patience Games

Will Warner reports

Solitaire 51.1 is out! Here is what’s new:

  • Added the Hungarian translation
  • Updated translations: Slovenian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Swedish
  • Made the game centered vertically
  • Made double-pressing move cards to the waste in Tri-Peaks
  • Added a deletion button for unfinished games
  • Made the card placeholder darker in the light theme

Jan-Michael Brummer announces

Saldo 0.9.0 is now available. Saldo is a FinTS banking application that connects to your bank and displays your balances and transactions.

This release modernises the application’s user interface with current libadwaita widgets and redesigns the account creation, transfer, category and settings dialogs for a more consistent experience. It also introduces an option to reset the database, updates the FinTS bank database, and resolves several issues affecting background operation, password changes and account refreshing. Available at Flathub: https://flathub.org/de/apps/org.tabos.saldo

dabrain34 reports

🎉 New Release Announcement: GstPipelineStudio v0.7.1 🎉

GstPipelineStudio version 0.7.1 is out! This bugfix release refreshes the application icon, now drawn in the GStreamer colors, and makes pipeline import keep the links to pads created at runtime.

What’s new in 0.7.1:

  • Application icon redrawn in the GStreamer red, green and blue, with the node graph running right to left
  • Importing a gst-launch description keeps links to pads that only appear at runtime (urisourcebin, demuxer outputs)
  • Big Buck Bunny preset switched to the AV1/Opus sample

Highlights of the 0.7.x series:

  • New application icon
  • Nodes colored by type: source, transform, sink
  • Swap a node for an alternative element from its context menu
  • Tags tab listing tags from bus messages
  • Sortable columns in the element and pipeline lists
  • Suggestions reuse a compatible free element already in the graph
  • Space bar toggles play/pause, s stops the pipeline
  • Explicit properties are kept when importing a pipeline
  • German translation added

Participants:

  • Stéphane Cerveau — maintainer and main contributor
  • Translations contributed through Weblate

🚀 Upgrade Now!

To get the latest version of GstPipelineStudio, visit the project’s page and check out the Changelog for more details.

Happy streaming! 🎬📡

Shell Extensions

storageb announces

Create your own Quick Settings toggle buttons!

Custom Command Toggle lets you add fully customizable toggle buttons to the Quick Settings menu. Turn shell commands, services, or your own scripts into toggles integrated directly into the GNOME panel.

Key Features:

  • Run commands or launch scripts from toggle buttons
  • Configure initial toggle states and startup behavior
  • Create custom dropdown menus from toggle buttons
  • Synchronize toggle states with a command’s output
  • Assign keyboard shortcuts to buttons
  • Import and export button configurations

The latest release adds support for creating dropdown menus on toggle buttons to run additional commands, adding even more functionality to your toggling experience. Italian, Dutch, and French translations have been added thanks to some contributions from the community. Other improvements include some under the hood bug fixes and performance improvements.

The extension is available on GNOME Extensions. For more information, see the documentation.

Events

Daniel Galleguillos Cruz says

GNOME Latam 2026: Call for Participation

We’re excited to announce GNOME Latam 2026, the regional gathering of the GNOME community in Latin America!

  • Dates: November 12–14, 2026
  • Venue: Universidad Anáhuac Mayab, Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
  • Format: Hybrid (in-person sessions with online streaming and remote participation)
  • Event page & registration: https://events.gnome.org/e/latam2026

About the Event

GNOME Latam 2026 brings together developers, system administrators, educators, designers, and open source enthusiasts from across Latin America. Building on previous regional collaborations, including our work with CCOSS, the event is more than a conference: it’s a community effort to grow, empower, and sustain the GNOME ecosystem in the region.

The program will include keynotes, technical workshops, panel discussions, and networking sessions, both in person and online. Our goal is to share knowledge and build lasting collaboration across borders.

Our Mission

To drive the adoption, development, and sustainability of GNOME and its software ecosystem in Latin America, while promoting the core values of free software: freedom, collaboration, openness, and transparency.

We believe access to technology should be universal, and that diverse perspectives, from experienced contributors to newcomers joining through community initiatives like CCOSS, are essential to inclusive innovation.

Goals

  • Outreach: Showcase the latest developments, roadmaps, and releases in the GNOME ecosystem.

  • Learning: Offer sessions for everyone, from users getting started with free software to developers who want to contribute code, design, or QA to GNOME.

  • Regional community: Strengthen the network of free software communities in Latin America through mentorship and collaboration with partners such as CCOSS.

  • Accessibility and inclusion: Use a hybrid format to remove geographic barriers and welcome participants from all backgrounds.

Get Involved

Code of Conduct: All in-person and online activities follow the GNOME Code of Conduct to ensure a safe, respectful, and harassment-free environment for everyone.

We hope to see you in Mérida or online!

GNOME Latam Team latam@gnome,org

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!