GNOME Shell & Mutter Reach The 3.34 Beta Milestone With Last-Minute Changes

Earlier this week was the GNOME 3.34 beta release that also marked the UI/feature/API/ABI freezes for this six month update to the GNOME desktop The GNOME Shell and Mutter are late to the party but on Friday evening saw their 3.33.90 (3.34 beta) releases.

GNOME Shell saw support added for DnD app picker folder management, clocks/weather integration support for sandboxed applications, support for start-up via systemd user instances, replacing Tweener with Clutter animations, consistent animation of new window actions, and a variety of bug fixes.

The Mutter 3.34 beta release meanwhile saw fixed visibility of clones with hidden source, reduced freezes when opening some pop-up windows, support for starting XWayland on-demand, and a variety of fixes. The starting XWayland on-demand so it's only active when needed is one of the low-level changes we're excited for with GNOME 3.34.

GNOME 3.34 stable is expected for release on 11 September.