GNOME 50.5 has been released as the latest maintenance update to the old-stable GNOME 50 desktop series. With GNOME 51 now the current stable branch, this release mainly targets distributions and users that continue to ship or run GNOME 50. In total, 22 components received updates.

GNOME Shell 50.5 fixes several user-visible issues, including glitches when switching workspaces with direct scanout, blocking when toggling wireless connectivity, duplicated locale keyboard layouts, and issues around the lock and unlock screens.

The update also ensures windows created through the new-window action open on the correct workspace, limits parallel texture loading, fixes a crash, and plugs several memory leaks.

Mutter 50.5 includes a broader collection of fixes. These include a hang triggered when hot-plugging an external monitor, multiple monitors incorrectly reported as primary, desaturated SDR content when HDR mode is enabled, and problems with cross-GPU buffer scanout.