GTK3 Toolkit Winding Down To One Release Per Year
The GTK 4.0 toolkit released in December 2020 while the GTK3 toolkit has continued to be maintained given a lot of software still relying on that older version. GTK 3.24.52 was released yesterday and with this version it's now shifting its release cadence to just one new update per year.
GTK3 had been seeing new point releases between once a month to every few months, depending upon what bugs were encountered or other fixes that needed to be resolved. In 2025 for example there were five GTK 3.24.xx point releases and four in 2024. But moving forward they are planning on just one new point release per year.
GTK+ 3.24.52 fixed a wide range of bugs and brought translation updates. There were a number of bugs revolving Wayland, GIMP usage, emoji CLDR 48 updates, and other random fixes throughout. With that v3.24.52 it carried a new note:
Given the rather mature state of GTK3 and also wanting developers to eventually move their applications to GTK4, it makes sense to pull back to just one new release per year for this older version of the GTK toolkit.
The GTK 3.24.52 changes for those interested can be found via GNOME's GitLab.
GTK3 had been seeing new point releases between once a month to every few months, depending upon what bugs were encountered or other fixes that needed to be resolved. In 2025 for example there were five GTK 3.24.xx point releases and four in 2024. But moving forward they are planning on just one new point release per year.
GTK+ 3.24.52 fixed a wide range of bugs and brought translation updates. There were a number of bugs revolving Wayland, GIMP usage, emoji CLDR 48 updates, and other random fixes throughout. With that v3.24.52 it carried a new note:
"Note: We are going to decrease the frequency of GTK3 releases and limit changes to important bug and crash fixes, going forward. The next GTK3 release is expected in March 2027."
Given the rather mature state of GTK3 and also wanting developers to eventually move their applications to GTK4, it makes sense to pull back to just one new release per year for this older version of the GTK toolkit.
The GTK 3.24.52 changes for those interested can be found via GNOME's GitLab.