New and Updated Applications

Other applications have had major updates for 3.12, and this release also includes a set of new preview applications. Additionally, there are many smaller bug fixes and enhancements to GNOME applications in the release.

Upgrade Your Web

Web, the GNOME browser, features a long list of interface improvements for 3.12. It has a new address bar design, which keeps the header bar clean and informative, a new style for incognito windows, better downloading behavior, an updated Most Visited page (which lets you quickly jump to the sites you visit most often), redesigned cookies and passwords dialogs and nicer error pages.

The new version also includes a number of significant performance gains, including faster startup and improvements to page loading speeds.

New Preview Applications for 3.12

GNOME 3.12 includes three new preview applications: Polari, Sound Recorder and Logs. Polari is a new, modern IRC client for GNOME, which provides an effective and streamlined way to communicate using the popular IRC chat protocol. Sound Recorder is a utility for recording audio from your computer. Designed to be simple to use, it shows an overview of your previous recordings, which you can play straight from the application. Finally, Logs is a new system utility for inspecting the software logs on your computer; it is designed to enable users and developers to easily find the sources of problems. Logs takes advantage of the powerful journaling capabilities provided by systemd.

All of these preview applications are very new, and are being released primarily for testing and feedback purposes.

Games Update Pack

GNOME's games have had an upgrade for 3.12. A total of 10 games have new modernized window layouts (this includes Chess, Five or More, Four-in-a-row, Iagno, Mahjongg, Mines, Quadrapassel, Swell Foop, Tetravex, and Tali). Lights Off and Quadrapassel now use the dark window theme to match their visual styles, and Four-in-a-row has a new theme that uses artwork from the Faenza icon set.

Additionally, Chess and Iagno have improved game logic for this release. In both games the computer player moves more slowly to give the game a more natural pace, and the computer player in Chess is now much easier to play against when using the GNU Chess engine.

Photos Update

Search has been added to Photos for 3.12, including the ability to search for photos from the Activities Overview. It also has Facebook integration, which allows you to view your Facebook photos directly from the app. Screenshot handling has also been improved, so that screenshots are now automatically sorted into a special album. Last but not least, performance has been improved: photos will now be loaded much faster when you have a large collection.

A More Featureful Terminal

The Terminal has a collection of new features. It now automatically wraps lines (there is a setting to configure this behaviour), and the new version includes a setting to use the dark visual theme for Terminal windows. The popular Solarized color palette has also been added to the color settings. Last but not least, it is now possible to search for terminals from the Activities Overview: searching for a command or locations will display open terminals and allow you to quickly switch to them.

Other Application Improvements

  • Notes has a new option to open notes in a new window, as well as a trash bin to prevent you from accidentally deleting notes.

  • Boxes has received networking improvements, which results in faster connection speeds and the ability for communication between boxes as well as between boxes and the host.

  • In Boxes, the option to import existing boxes from the host system has also been added, and operating system detection has been extended to cover additional OS types and versions.

  • You can now create playlists in Music.

  • For 3.12, panning between locations is smoother in Maps. Search will autocomplete previous searches, and there is a better minimum zoom level.

  • Evince features improved accessibility for reading PDFs. Further accessibility improvements are planned for next release.