Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from July 31 to August 7.

GNOME Core Apps and Libraries

File Previewer ↗

A previewer companion for GNOME Files.

Peter Eisenmann announces

Since its “revival”, sushi, the previewer companion for nautilus, has seen a lot of activity. This wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions and support of Tau Gärtli, who very recently also became a maintainer 🎉

Additional changes for version 51 since the last report :

• Revamped plugin API to easily expand sushi’s capabilities
• Smoother transitions between files, especially noticable for images
• Protected HTML previews with optional web content loading
• Simplified headerbar layout
• Reduced memory usage with fixed memory leaks
• Many additional bug fixes and added little niceties

You can test these changes in GNOME OS or by installing sushi and nautilus from the gnome-nightly Flatpak repository.

Peter’s work is funded by the GNOME Fellowship program. You can support the fellowship program via a donation .

Document Viewer (Papers) ↗

View, search or annotate documents in many different formats.

Lucas Baudin announces

With Papers 51.beta, it is now possible to add visual signatures to PDF documents! This was part of Malika’s internship, read more about it here .

GNOME Development Tools

Felipe Borges announces

A new implementation of GNOME Boxes (beta) is now available for general testing. It has been reworked from the ground up and has a bunch of new features in the works. You can find more about it on Felipe’s “Future of Boxes” blog post .

GNOME Fellowship

Sophie (she/her) reports

I have completed my first month of my GNOME Fellowship. You can read my full report for July 2026 on my blog.

Sovereign Tech Fellowship

Philipp Sauberzweig announces

I’ve started a blog about my design work in GNOME. Check out the introductory post , and follow the blog for regular updates on my activities during the Sovereign Tech Fellowship.

Third Party Projects

seja-arctic-fox says

Hello! This week, I released a new version of VidCom , a simple app for archiving and compressing videos.

Changes in version 0.83 include:

• Prevent logout/suspend while encoding
• Page for results reflects the encoding status better
• You can now select multiple videos in the queue by holding the Shift key
• ‘Select all’ button is no longer a toggle and can also deselect videos
• Added support for AVC (H264) encoding
• You can now open videos with VidCom. It will automatically import them into the queue upon doing so
• Custom default options can be set, such as the target size, export folder, all the exposed codec parameters and more
• bugfixes and improvements

Vidcom is currently available on Flathub and AUR. Detailed release notes can be seen here

Alexander Vanhee reports

Bazaar got its 0.9.2 update, mostly improving what happens when you’re not actively using the app. Instead of keeping the full app running, Bazaar now uses a lightweight background daemon process to handle the GNOME Shell search provider and the brand new auto-update system. This reduces the background memory footprint by at least 10 times!

Please donate to Kolunmi if you like these changes.

Ronnie Nissan reports

Hello. This week I updated two of my apps, Sitra to v0.1.3 and Embellish to v1.1.0.

Sitra:

• Installed fonts are now sorted first and have a badge indicating they are installed.
• Added Turkish translations thanks to episutv

Embellish:

Updated to NerdFonts v3.5.0, and as a consequence:

• Added two new fonts: Annotation Mono and Google Sans Code
• New icons like Obsidian and Zsh.

For now, you will have to reinstall all your fonts (expect custom fonts) to update them to the latest version, will think of a better mechanism for the next release.

Concessio is also being rewritten in Vala, making the code very clean and easier to add features and the app very fast.

See some other week hopefully 🤞

Tanay Bhomia reports

Whisp v1.4.0 - OCR Text Extraction and French Translation

Whisp is a frictionless, gesture-driven note-taking application designed natively for the GNOME desktop. It eliminates file management and save buttons entirely, acting as a rapid-capture scratchpad for passing thoughts, code snippets, and daily tasks.

This week, Whisp released version 1.4.0, introducing a powerful new feature called “Smart Paste”. By copying an image or taking a screenshot of unselectable text—like a paused video tutorial or a system dialog—and pasting it into Whisp, the app instantly extracts the embedded text. The on-device OCR engine not only grabs the words, but mathematically reconstructs the original indentation and paragraph spacing. The release also includes official French localization and several keyboard workflow refinements.

This update is perfect for developers, students, and researchers who frequently need to digitize structured text from YouTube videos, scanned PDFs, or locked interfaces without ever breaking their keyboard workflow.

github - https://github.com/tanaybhomia/Whisp website - https://tanaybhomia.github.io/Whisp/ donate - https://tanaybhomia.github.io/Whisp/donate.html

Shell Extensions

Disk_MTH reports

I’ve released Tailscale for GNOME 1.0.1, a Shell extension that brings the Tailscale VPN into the Quick Settings menu: connect and switch accounts, pick an exit node (with a panel warning when the node you picked stops routing), send and receive files over Taildrop, and publish local services with Funnel. It stays close to the platform: the file picker is the XDG portal, revealing a received file goes through org.freedesktop.FileManager1, and there’s a “Send with Taildrop” entry in the Nautilus right-click menu. With no tailscale installed it goes inert instead of breaking, and it comes back on its own once the package is there, with no reload. Available on extensions.gnome.org for GNOME Shell 49 and 50, in English, French, German and Italian. Source

Cleo Menezes Jr. says

A new version of Static Workspace Background extension is out, and now it’s even smoother. Fast switches between workspaces get a nice little bounce.

Get it on EGO: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/8505/static-workspace-background

Events

Brage Fuglseth says

The talks from GUADEC 2026 are now available as individual clips on YouTube . Feel free to engage with the videos and share them with anyone who may find them interesting.

That’s all for this week!

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #thisweek:gnome.org with updates on your own projects!