It has been a year and a half since my previous GNOME core apps update. Last time, for GNOME 45, GNOME Photos was removed from GNOME core without replacement, and Loupe and Snapshot (user-facing names: Image Viewer and Camera) entered, replacing Eye of GNOME and Cheese, respectively. There were no core app changes in GNOME 46 or 47.
Now for GNOME 48, Decibels (Audio Player) enters GNOME core. Decibels is intended to close a longstanding flaw in GNOME’s core app set: ever since Totem (Videos) hid its support for opening audio files, there has been no easy way to open an audio file using GNOME core apps. Totem could technically still do so, but you would have to know to attempt it manually. Decibels fixes this problem. Decibels is a simple app that will play your audio file and do nothing else, so it will complement GNOME Music, the music library application. Decibels is maintained by Shema Angelo Verlain and David Keller (thank you!) and is notably the only GNOME core app that is written in TypeScript.
Looking to the future, the GNOME Incubator project tracks future core apps to ensure there is sufficient consensus among GNOME distributors before an app enters core. Currently Papers (future Document Viewer, replacing Evince) and Showtime (future Videos or possibly Video Player, replacing Totem) are still incubating. Applications in Incubator are not yet approved to enter core, so it’s not a done deal yet, but I would expect to see these apps enter core sooner rather than later, hopefully for GNOME 49. Now is the right time for GNOME distributors to provide feedback on these applications: please don’t delay!
On a personal note, I have recently left the GNOME release team to reduce my workload, so I no longer have any direct role in managing the GNOME core apps or Incubation process. But I think it makes sense to continue my tradition of reporting on core app changes anyway!