When you’re working Elementary OS 8, there is a new spherical of updates out there, bringing some neat enhancements, significantly to its signature Dock and the underlying window supervisor, Gala. In case you are not acquainted, Elementary OS positions itself as a cultured various to Home windows and macOS. It runs its personal customized desktop surroundings known as Pantheon, with Gala dealing with all of the window administration magic, like animations and the way home windows behave.

Within the new replace, the Dock will get some notable new methods, together with the return of a few options that old-school Plank (the Dock’s basis) customers may bear in mind. For starters, the Dock now exhibits a number of indicator dots beneath an app icon in case you have multiple window open for that utility, which is helpful for rapidly seeing what’s working. Plus, in case you are dragging one thing and hover over an app icon within the Dock, it can cycle by way of that app’s open home windows, making it simpler to drop your merchandise into the suitable place.

You can too now long-press an app icon to carry up its context menu, a pleasant contact for many who desire that interplay. The elementary OS crew additionally squashed some bugs associated to cover modes and reminiscence utilization, preserving issues working easily.

Gala itself just lately received an enormous replace, addressing round 20 reported points and introducing a model new Gesture Controller. This implies customers can now swipe up within the Multitasking View to shut home windows, a slick and intuitive gesture. App titles are actually at all times proven in Multitasking View, a big enchancment for touchscreen customers. Customers additionally get notified once they take a screenshot with a keyboard shortcut, and this notification lets them soar straight to the picture in Information.

Another welcome Gala enhancements embody saving window states on sleep and shutdown, and fixing an annoying bug the place menus may solely present as soon as. For players, a repair for Lutris Flatpak installations inflicting Gala to crash with GE Proton setups will probably be a reduction, and customers of the Postman app will probably be blissful to know that window captures for it are now not partially rendered.

Shifting again to Elementary OS 8, in System Settings, selecting gentle or darkish mode correctly snoozes your schedule as an alternative of outright disabling it. The Cut back Movement setting has been expanded to cowl a wider array of animations, which is a blessing for people vulnerable to movement illness. Hotcorners received some fixes too, and there’s a new choice to maintain them lively even when an utility is full display screen.

Different notable updates embody added display screen reader help for notifications and the shortcut overlay, fixes for Flatpak sandbox points that affected apps like Steam, and the newest model of GNOME Internet, which introduced higher efficiency and a redesigned bookmarks sidebar.

You possibly can obtain all these updates by opening System Settings, heading to System, and hitting “Replace All.”