GNOME's settings menu has largely remained unchanged for some time now. However, that may change shortly, as a few key changes are being worked on.
No, I am not talking about the redesigned display options, and fractional scaling tweaks that are set to arrive on GNOME soon.
Allow me to show you what I am talking about.
What's Happening: A new 'System' panel will be added to the GNOME settings menu to house various important settings under a single umbrella for easy access.
So, settings such as Region & Language, Date & Time, Users, About, and Remote Desktop options (new) will be moved into the singular 'System' panel.
This was proposed by GNOME's Allan Day, a few months back, where he showcased a mockup of how the new panel would look.
The new 'System' panel does look quite resourceful; it houses all the essential options one would expect from such a settings panel.
Well, you see, work on this has already begun thanks to GSoC contributor Gotam Gorabh who has been pushing code for the new 'System' panel since last week.
He shared progress on how the new panel looks like:
In its current state, it's in a very bare-bones condition. But, this will get better as development progresses.
His most recent merge was for integrating the new 'Remote Desktop' option page into the 'System' panel.
Here's what that looks like:
I must say, this looks pretty impressive 👀
This should enable users to access/control any computer or desktop environment remotely from any location.
🚧 However, Felipe Borges from GNOME mentioned that this change for Remote Desktop is not needed at the moment but later as part of the goal for gsoc internship. For now, the Remote Desktop dialog you find under GNOME's sharing option in system settings will be copied to the new System panel implementation.
When to Expect: If you were to follow Gotam's GSoC proposal for this undertaking, then I would say by the end of August would be my best bet for the work to complete.
And guess what? GNOME 45 is scheduled to be released around 20th September 2023. Maybe we will see this included then or as part of a point release 😉
Until then, we can only wait and watch. For more details on the contributor's work for GNOME, you can follow his Medium page.
💬 What do you think about this change for GNOME? Are you happy with some of the upcoming UX changes coming to GNOME?
