Along with the release of the Mutter 49 beta , GNOME Shell 49 beta was released on Sunday in preparation for the imminent GNOME 49 beta release. Notable here is long sought after support for having the ability to restart or shutdown the computer from GNOME's lock screen.

Since 2019 has been a bug report to allow for power controls from the GNOME lock screen to be able to shutdown or restart the computer if desired without needing to first log-in. Only now with GNOME 49 is that being realized with optionally allowing restart/shutdown options on the lock-screen.

For those that may not want to allow unauthenticated users or anyone seeing the lock screen to be able to restart/power-off, the behavior whether this is allowed is controlled by the new "restart-enabled" setting within "org.gnome.desktop.screensaver". More details on this long overdue option via this merge .

GNOME Shell 49 beta also now replaces Evince with the Papers document viewer in the Utilities folder, grouping screenshot/screencast notifications, fixing pointer scaling glitches within the GNOME Shell magnifier, and adding per-monitor brightness sliders within the quick settings. There is also a variety of bug fixes and other enhancements to find with the GNOME Shell 49 beta.

More details on the GNOME Shell 49 beta via the release commit .