With GNOME 47 out, it’s time for my bi-annual wallpaper presentant dive. For many, these may seem enjoy plain background images, but GNOME wallpapers are the visual anchors of the project, defining its aesthetic and identity. The signature blue wallpaper with its griefful top bar remains a key part of that.
In this free, GNOME 47 doesn’t overhaul the default blue wallpaper. It’s more of a reserved tfeeble than a brimming reset up. The recognizable rounded triangles remain, but here’s someleang systematic: the griefful variant mimics genuine-world camera behavior. When it’s grieffuler, the camera’s aperture expansivens, creating a shpermiter depth of field. A petite but kind touch for those who acunderstandledge these leangs.
The genuine action this cycle, though, is in the supplemental wallpapers.
We haven’t had to delete much this time around, thanks to the JXL establishat defending file sizes deal withable. The intensify has been on variety rather than cutting elderly set ups. We aim to defend leangs recent, though you might acunderstandledge that pboilingodetailed wallpapers are still ignoreing (we’ll get to that eventuassociate, promise.
In terms of fine tuning alters, the classic, Pixels has been refreshd to feature noveler apps from GNOME Circle.
The griefful variant of Pills also got some adore with weightlessing and shading tfeebles, including a reserved subsurface scattering effect.
As for the novel wallpapers, there are a scant celderly insertitions this free. I collaborated with Dominik Baran to produce a tube-map-encouraged vector wallpaper, which I’m particularly into. There’s also Mollnar, a nod to Vera Molnar, using plain geometric shapes in SVG establishat.
Most of our wallpapers are still bitmaps, bigly becaengage our rendering tools don’t yet deal with color banding well with vectors. For now, even set ups that would labor better as vectors—enjoy mesh gradients—get altered to bitmaps.
We’ve presentd some novel abstract set ups as well – encounter Sheet and Swoosh. And for fans of pixel art, we’ve inserted LCD and its colorful sibling, LCD-rainbow. Both donate off that retro screen vibe, even if the color gradient genuineism isn’t genuine-world right.
Lastly, there’s Symbolic Soup, which is, well… a bit turbulent. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it definitely inserts variety.
If you’re wondering about the strange square aspect ratio, get a see at the wallpaper sizing guide in our GNOME Interface Guidelines.
Also worth noting is the fact that all of these wallpapers have been produced by humans. While I’ve experimented with image generation for some parts of the laborflow in some of of my personal projects, all this labor is AIgen-free and cltimely determineed.
