In addition to Friday's very exciting [1]GNOME 48 release candidate with some last minute features, there have also been some other GNOME-related changes this week to call out.

This Week in GNOME is out with their newest issue to highlight some of the interesting GNOME changes to land this week from apps to the GTK tool-kit. There are a few items worth mentioning for this week, especially on the GTK side.

With the GTK toolkit, the recently-merged [2]GTK Android back-end there is now initial support for OpenGL. There isn't yet full OpenGL support for the GTK Android back-end but enough that most apps using GTK's GLArea should work. This should also yield better Android GTK performance especially for effects like shadows.

GTK on macOS meanwhile with GTK 4.18 will use native window controls. This is a new opt-in feature for GTK on Apple macOS to enjoy native window controls.

Refine 0.5 as [3]an alternative to GNOME Tweaks is out with more improvements for tuning your GNOME desktop experience. Refine 0.5 adds support for rearranging the tilebar's window buttons.

More details on other GNOME changes this week via the [4]This Week in GNOME blog.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-48-Release-Candidate

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Text-Editor-Sidebar

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Starts-2025

[4] https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2025/03/twig-190/