GNOME 49.1, the first maintenance update for the GNOME 49 desktop environment, has been released with fixes aimed at improving stability and performance. The update addresses issues in the shell, compositor, core applications, and toolkits. It became available on October 16, 2025.
The GNOME Project released GNOME 49.1 on October 16, 2025, as the initial point release in the 49 series. This maintenance update focuses on refining the desktop experience through regression fixes, enhanced stability, and better accessibility for Linux users.
Key improvements include updates to GNOME Shell 49.1, which resolves freezes when adjusting quick-settings sliders on touch devices, refines login-screen focus behavior, and enhances notification management. The Mutter compositor in version 49.1 eliminates resize and drag glitches, improves X11 drag-and-drop functionality, and addresses keyboard-driven window resizing along with several crash and memory leak conditions.
In session and login management, GDM 49.1 fixes a rare shell lock-up, improves user session migration from GNOME Initial Setup, corrects user listing logic, and ensures proper Wayland detection. GNOME Session 49.1 eliminates zombie processes, fixes option-parsing errors, and boosts compatibility in non-systemd environments.
Core applications see targeted fixes: Nautilus 49.1 addresses crashes, sidebar drag issues, and UI inconsistencies, though it introduces a known regression in app chooser search. GNOME Software 49.1 restores reliable add-on dependency lookups and fixes missed update notifications. Epiphany 49.1 corrects address bar rendering for non-Latin characters and resolves favicon and thumbnail regressions. Calculator 49.1 fixes incorrect BDT currency conversion rates, while GNOME Remote Desktop 49.1 resolves NVIDIA GPU image corruption. GNOME Calls 49.1 and 49.1.1 integrate with GNOME Session, add D-Bus activation, and introduce USSD support for oFono.
Toolkit updates feature GTK 4.20.2, which corrects text-shadow layering, caret rendering, and Wayland transforms while introducing a new GtkAccessibleHypertext API. GTK 3.24.51 enhances UTF-8 title handling on Wayland and threading safety on X11. GJS 1.86.0 now depends on GLib 2.86 with test and introspection fixes. Glycin 2.0.3 improves sandboxing and animation handling, and libadwaita 1.8.1 enhances accessibility, touchscreen behavior, and RTL layout alignment.
Accessibility improvements in Orca 49.1 through 49.3 reduce event-flood instability, improve GTK4 output, and expand D-Bus Remote Controller support. LocalSearch 3.10.1 and TinySPARQL 3.10.1 enhance database resilience, memory handling, and crash recovery.
Several modules, including GLib, librsvg, libsoup, GVFS, Pango, Vala, and xdg-desktop-portal-gnome, remain unchanged in this cycle.