After six months of development, the release of GTK 4.18, a multifaceted toolkit for creating a graphic user interface, has been published. GTK 4 is part of a development process aimed at providing application developers with a stable and supported API for several years, eliminating the need for frequent application remakes due to changes in the API.
Among the most noticeable improvements in gtk 4.18:
- An experimental backend has been added to launch GTK applications on smartphones with the Android platform, allowing the use of OpenGL for drawing on Android.
- The X11 protocol backend has been declared outdated and will be terminated in the GTK 5 branch due to the development halt of the X11 protocol and the focus on Wayland by GTK and GNOME developers.
- The Broadway backend has been declared outdated, enabling the drawing of GTK library output in a web browser window.
- The gtkshortcutswindow class, displaying keyboard combinations and screen gestures, will be replaced by a widget provided by libadwaita.
- The old “GL” drawing engine has been removed in favor of using Opengl. A new NGL engine has been introduced in GTK 4.14, built on the same code base as the Vulkan engine, with optimizations for OpenGL differences.
- A new Accesskit backend has been added for integration with accessibility tools for people with disabilities on Windows and MacOS platforms.
- Improvements in Wayland include better XDG portals settings handling, instant cursor design theme switching, enhanced cursor processing, and resolved issues with incorrect mouse pointer scaling on Wayland systems.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.