14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a while since the GNOME Disk Utility application, also known as Disks, received any major improvements, but it looks like its maintainers are preparing a bunch of enhancements for the upcoming GNOME 3.26 desktop environment.
The development cycle of GNOME 3.26 started last month with the first milestone, GNOME 3.25.1, and a second one, GNOME 3.25.2, arrived last weekend with a bunch of updated components and apps, including the first development release of the upcoming GNOME Disk Utility 3.26 application.
GNOME Disk Utility 3.25.2 is now available for public testing, and it looks like it brings quite a number of improvements, both under the hood and cosmetically. For example, it offers a more clarified meaning of the encryption and mounting options, and implements an insensitive auto-clear switch for unused loop devices.
Moreover, Disks now uses MIME types for disk images, prompts users to stop running jobs when attempting to close the app, automatically disables auto-clear before any operation needing unmount, along with the ability to implicitly auto-clear the handling for the lock and unmount buttons.
New App Menu entry lets users create an empty disk image
GNOME Disk Utility 3.25.2 also comes with a new App Menu entry that lets users create an empty disk image, adds a tooltip text to the auto-clear switch, displays the UUID of selected volumes by default, implements hints for passphrase fields, and removes the unused "Erase Disks" dialog.
Among other noteworthy changes, we can mention that the behavior of the filesystem creation dialog has been improved, as well as the unmounting and probing of mounted volumes, the label dialog hint was changed, and various deprecated GTK+ functions were removed.
The full changelog is attached below if you're curious to know what exactly is new in this first development release of Disks 3.26, which will be released later this year as part of the GNOME 3.26 desktop environment. If you want to have an early taste, you can download and compile GNOME Disk Utility 3.25.2 on your GNU/Linux OS.