After two years of development, Graphs 2.0 is finally out!

This will be a shorter blog, as the changelist of the new features have been discussed in the previous post in more detail, you can check this out here in more detail if you’re interested: https://blogs.gnome.org/sstendahl/2026/04/14/announcing-the-upcoming-graphs-2-0/

For a quick overview, a quick reprise of the most interesting features can be found here in bullet-point format:

• • New Data Types with proper equations: In this new release, we finally have proper support for equations, where equations are manipulated analytically (e.g. a derivative on y = 12x² will result in y = 24x, and be rendered accordingly), limits are rendered infinitely, and equations can be changed after importing them. To accomodate this change, we now have three different data types. Equations, Imported Data, and Generated Data. Imported Data is regular data that you import from file. Generated Data behaves the same as Imported Data, but you generate the dataset using an equation. For generate data you can also change the equation after the fact, and rerender, or change limits or amount of generated datapoints.
  • New Style Editor: We revamped the style editor. One major change is that you can now easily import new styles based on matplotlib-style themes, and you can also export your style and share it with others. If you have a nice style you want to share with us, open an issue on the GitLab page and let us know. We’re looking to expand the default choice of styles :). Furthermore, when editing  a style, you finally see a preview of how this affects the canvas. This way you don’t need to guess, or go back and forth when finetuning a style.
  • UX-changes : Whilst the general look-and-feel of Graphs is still mostly the same, we did make some UX-changes with how we handle settings. Mainly, instead of showing a modal popup dialog, settings that affect the canvas itself (i.e. item and figure settings) are now shown in the sidebar instead. The reason for this, is that the popup dialog hid the figure that you’re editing, making it difficult to see how your changes actually affect your canvas.
  • Improved data import. We revamped the data import completely. First of all, we have made the codebase here much more modular, making it easier to write new parsers for other filetypes. We now added support for SQLite Database Files, Microsoft Excel Sheets and .ods files from LibreOffice Calc. It’s also now possible to import multiple files at once, and finetuning the settings for each file individually. Another nice feature here is that you can now import multiple datasets from the same file without having to reimport them. Finally, we added proper-support also for single-column imports where x-data can be generated using your own equation
  • Error bar support: Graphs now has proper support for error bars. The error bar style can be set globally in the new style editor, or individually for each item.
  • Reworked Curve Fitting : The curve fitting logic has almost been completely rewritten. Whilst it mostly still works the same, the confidence band that is shown is now calculated properly using the Delta-method, instead of using a naive way using the limits of the standard deviations. We also added support to show the residuals to verify your fits, and added more useful error messages when things go wrong. The results in the curve fitting dialog now also show the root mean squared error as a second goodness-of-fit figure. The parameter values themselves in the curve fitting dialog are no longer rounded (e.g. 421302 used to be rounded to 421000) and finally custom equations in the curve fitting dialog now have an apply button, greatly improving the smoothness when entering new equations
  • Proper Mobile Support: With this release, we now officially feel confident in stating proper mobile support. The entire UI is tested on real mobile phones using PostMarketOS, and everything works properly. Labels are now also ellipsized earlier on narrow displays, so that the UI remains useable.
  • Reworked Figure Exports: Figure exports are reworked. Instead of simply taking a snapshot of the current canvas, you can set the actual size in pixels when exporting a figure. This is vital when trying to create reproducable figures for e.g. publications. Of course, you can also easily still use the same canvas that you see in the application.
  • Quality of life changes : We haven’t even gone through each individual change we made in the blog, but here’s a quick fire-round of more quality-of-life changes:
    • It is now possible to have multiple instances of Graphs open at the same time
    • The style editor now also has the option to draw tick labels (so the numeric values) on all axes containing ticks, this is not supported by default in Matplotlib, so we had to add our own parameter here
    • Graphs now inhibits the session when unsaved data is still open, so you get a warning if you close your computer with unsaved data.
    • Added support for base-2 logarithmic scaling
    • Graphical fixes for the drag-drop animations, which used to look somewhat glitchy
    • Panning and zooming are now done consistently on all axes when using multiple axes
    • Data can now be imported by drag-and-drop into Graphs
    • The subtitle now also shows the full file path for Flatpaks
    • Limits can now easily be clicking on the numbers near the axes
    • The custom transformation has gained the following extra variables: x_mean, y_mean, x_median, y_median, x_std, y_std and counts
    • Warnings are now displayed when trying to open a project from a beta version
    • The many code refactors and reimplementations from Python to Vala makes the application more robust, and significantly more performance. Especially when working with larger datasets.

This release took a long time to get right, but we’re happy to get the new features to the public. Graphs is handcrafted by human hands, which takes more time than LLM-based slop. But the longer manual process does allow us to think through changes, and make intentional decisions with human care. I am very proud to say we are able to deliver something intentional where we can deliver the polish that both Graphs, as well as the users deserve. As always, thanks to anyone involved which includes everyone who has been providing feedback, reported issues, contributed with code, or helped in any other possible way. And of course especially to Christoph who has been maintaining Graphs with me and is responsible for a large part of the architectural changes that made this release possible.

Go get the new release from Flathub here !

p.s. On a more personal note with a shameless plug, I will be speaking at GUADEC 2026 about my journey into app development, and how to get into this world as an outsider without a CS degree. Be sure to check that out if you are interested in starting with applications, and want to know how it is to join a project in the GNOME ecosystem, it’s a lot less scary than it may sounds

I’ll be joining on-site, so say hi to me there if you have any questions or are up for a chat :). Otherwise the whole event will be livestreamed as well, and you can always reach me at sstendahl@gnome.org.