Progress Update For GNOME 43

GNOME 43 is out the door now, and I want to use this post to share what I’ve done since my post about my plans.

Adaptive Nautilus

The main window of Nautilus is now adaptive, working at mobile sizes. This change required multiple steps:

• I moved the sidebar from the old GtkPaned widget to the new AdwFlap widget.
• I added a button to reveal the sidebar.
• I refactored the toolbar widgetry to seamlessly support multiple toolbars (allowing me to add a bottom toolbar without code duplication).
• I ported most of the message dialogs to the new AdwMessageDialog widget.
• I made the empty views use AdwStatusPage.

There are a few issues left before I can call Nautilus fully adaptive, though. The biggest issue is that the Other Locations view does not scale down to mobile sizes. The Other Locations review is currently in the process of being redesigned, so that should be resolved in the near future. Next, the new Properties dialog does not get small enough vertically for landscape mode. Finally, a few message dialogs don’t use AdwMessageDialog and will require special care to port.

In addition to the adaptive widgetry, I also landed some general cleanups to the codebase after the GTK4 port.

Loupe

Since my post in April, Loupe has received many changes. Allan Day provided a new set of mockups for me to work from, and I’ve implemented the new look and a sidebar for the properties. There are some open questions about how the properties should be shown on mobile sizes, so for now Loupe doesn’t fit on phones with the properties view open.

 

I’ve also reworked the navigation and page loading. Back in April, Loupe only loaded one image at a time, and pressing the arrow keys would load the next image. This could lead to freezes when loading large images. Now Loupe uses AdwCarousel and buffers multiple images on both sides of the current image, and loads the buffered images on a different thread.

Loupe also now has code for translations in place, so that once it’s hooked up to GNOME’s translation infrastructure contributors will be able to translate the UI.

Libadwaita

Some exciting new widgets landed in libadwaita this cycle: AdwAboutWindow, AdwMessageDialog, AdwEntryRow, and AdwPasswordEntryRow. I made an effort to have these new widgets adopted in core applications where possible.

I ported the following apps to use AdwAboutWindow:

• Text Editor
• Weather
• Disk Usage Analyzer
• Font Viewer
• Characters
• Nautilus
• Calendar
• Clocks
• Calculator
• Logs
• Maps
• Extensions
• Music

Now every single core app that uses GTK4 uses AdwAboutWindow.

I ported Nautilus and Maps to AdwMessageDialog where possible, and adjusted Contacts and Calendar to use AdwEntryRow. Contacts needed some extra properties on AdwEntryRow, so I implemented those.

I also started work on a new widget, AdwSpinRow. Hopefully it will land this cycle.

Calendar

In addition to the changes mentioned in the libadwaita section, I also made Calendar fit at small widths with AdwLeaflet. The app received a large redesign already, and it was only a few small changes away from being mobile-ready. There are still a few issues with fit, but those should hopefully be resolved soon.

Calendar 44 will hopefully use AdwMessageDialog and a new date selector in the event editor – I have open merge requests for both changes.

Misc. Changes

• Minor fixups for GNOME Music’s empty state
• Updated core app screenshots for Disk Usage Analyzer, Text Editor, Contacts, Calendar, and Nautilus
• Ported Sound Recorder to Typescript

Conclusion

Overall I made a lot of progress, and I hope to make much more this cycle. The GNOME 43 cycle overlapped a very busy time in my life, and now things have cooled down. With your help, I would love to be able to focus more of my time on implementing things you care about.

I have three places you can support me:

• Patreon
• GitHub Sponsors
• Paypal.me (for one-time payments)

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading to the end, and I look forward to reporting more progress at the end of the GNOME 44 cycle.