GTK 4.12 Released With Many Vulkan Backend Improvements

Tagged on Saturday was GTK 4.12 as the newest version of this open-source toolkit.

GTK 4.12 brings "many improvements" to its Vulkan back-end, adds "scroll_to" APIs for list widgets, improved font rendering within Flatpak packages, a GTK4 render-node tool has been added, and various other fixes and updates. The Vulkan work has included adding a pipeline cache, fancy gradients, and a variety of other smaller improvements across the board.

There is also some additional Wayland work in GTK 4.12 that includes fixing the behavior of stylus buttons and supporting the suspended window state. The continued work on Vulkan rendering with GTK4 seems to be the most significant though of the changes for the GTK 4.12 cycle.

More details on the GTK 4.12 changes can be found via the FreeDesktop.org GitLab. Previously there's been talk of GTK5 development heating up after GTK 4.12, so we'll see if that indeed pans out moving forward.