GNOME

Here's what it's like to upgrade to GNOME 51

You can expect improvements in display brightness controls, touchpad configuration, and overall a more smooth look to GNOME.

Jordan Gloor

Jordan Gloor

— 2 min read
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The GNOME logo and name in black over a gradient of pastel colors.

GNOME 51 is out and arriving on the latest Linux distributions. This is a peek at what to expect and what it looks like when you upgrade to the newest version of the popular desktop environment.

What's new

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  • Passkey logins: The desktop login page now allows for authentication via FIDO2 passkeys and web-based logins. This is only really important for those using GNOME in enterprise setups.
    • Everyday GNOME folks probably won't have reason to bother.
  • Document signatures: The "Papers" app for viewing documents now has a built-in feature for adding signatures to documents. Signatures can be either hand-drawn or extracted from images, and they can be saved for re-use.
  • Automatic touchpad disabling: In GNOME Settings, you can now set your laptop's touchpad to automatically disable when an external mouse has been detected. This can help you avoid unintentional mouse movements.
  • Reduced graphics motion: In the accessibility settings, you can enable "Reduced Motion" to make graphic animations less noticeable.
  • Auto-rotate controls: If your display has an accelerometer built-in, GNOME's display settings will now let you toggle auto-rotate for that display.
  • Offline maps: The GNOME Maps app now has built-in support for downloading maps to your device. This means you can navigate with the Maps app while not connected to the internet
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What's getting better

  • Visuals: The Mutter engine that powers GNOME has been optimized for faster image rendering, and for improved screen recordings and remote desktop sessions.
  • Screenshot controls: When you open the screenshot tool, you can adjust the size incrementally by holding Shift while pressing the arrow keys, and you can move the screenshot area by holding Alt.
  • Monitor brightness settings: GNOME 51 properly remembers your brightness configuration for each display, and it persists through reboots.
  • The images app: The Image Viewer now shows more detailed metadata about images, including the info about camera that captured the photo.
  • GNOME Web's password manager: The password manager built into GNOME's native web browser can now generate complex passwords for you when you're creating accounts, then store them for you.
  • Wallpapers: This release comes with a set of new GNOME-original wallpapers.
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What's going away

  • WEP network settings: The now long-outdated Wi-Fi security protocol has been fully removed from the network settings menu in GNOME 51.
    • Its weak security means no one should be using it at this point anyway.

Zooming out

Why this update matters: GNOME is up there with KDE Plasma as one of the most popular desktop environments you can get on Linux and other open source operating systems. The changes that come with GNOME 51 are coming to a lot of Linux desktops.

My take: I've always preferred the experience of KDE Plasma, but I have to admit while playing around with it, the overall feel of GNOME 51 was fluid. I also appreciate the screenshot controls.

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Diving in

The fineprint: To learn more, check out the official GNOME 51 release notes.

Get it now: GNOME 51 will be coming to bleeding-edge Linux distributions soon. One place you'll find it soon is Fedora Linux 45 and Ubuntu 26.10, due out October 2026. For testing purposes only, you can try installing GNOME OS.

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