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Nearly two years after the release of Xfce 4.16, here comes another major update to one of the oldest and lightest desktop environments for GNU/Linux distributions, Xfce 4.18.
Xfce 4.18 is packed with lots of new features and improvements to the file manager, panel, plugins, and other core components. For example, the Thunar file manager now features not one but two image preview side panes, a new Split View, recursive search, and finally lets you undo or redo basic file operations.
Xfce 4.18 also makes it possible to customize Thunar’s toolbar, status bar style, and custom actions, offers the ability for users to add a “file creation date” column to the List View, as well as to highlight the background and name of files using different colors, and lets you access recently used files in the side pane.
On top of that, Thunar gets a new, separate Bookmarks menu in order to keep the Go menu compact, a new info bar for the Trash folder with access to the Empty Trash and Restore functionality, improved management of setting or unsettling default apps for specific mime types, and the ability to arrange custom actions in cascading submenus.
Thunar’s preferences dialog has been updated as well in Xfce 4.18 with the ability to limit the file size for generated thumbnails and unified thumbnail settings, the ability to verify file checksums, support for restoring tabs on startup, and a new checkbox allows the running of shell scripts.
The Application Finder received an option to let you hide the window decorations, support for parsing environment variables when passed in the collapsed mode, and support for the PrefersNonDefaultGPU property for launching apps with your dedicated graphic card.
Among other noteworthy changes, Xfce 4.18 introduces a new generic shortcut editor to give users a graphical interface for modifying component-specific shortcuts, adds a comfortable widget for filename input to prevent invalid filenames, adds adaptive vsync support with GLX for the compositor, and improves support for UI scaling to better support HiDPI screens.
Also noteworthy is the fact that Xfce’s workspace setting will now work with other window managers and that all the header bars of Xfce windows and dialogs are now drawn by the Xfwm4 window manager by default, and some of the dialogs now optionally support CSD (Client-Side Decorations).
For more details on the changes implemented in Xfce 4.18, take the official tour. Since this is a major version of the Xfce desktop environment, I expect it to land in the stable software repositories of various popular distributions in the coming weeks or with the next major release, such as Xubuntu 23.04.
Last updated 1 year ago
