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The GNOME Project has shared today a sneak peek at the revamped login and lock screens in the upcoming GNOME 3.36 desktop environment.
GNOME 3.36 is shaping up to be a great update for the open source desktop environment used by numerous GNU/Linux distribution by default, including Ubuntu and Fedora. One of the new features in the upcoming release is revamped lock and login screens.
GNOME’s Allan Day shared today a sneak peek at the new design of the login and lock screen in GNOME 3.36, which have not seen a major update since the release of GNOME 3.6 in September 2012.
The new login and lock screens, which you can see in action below, aim to reduce friction and make the login and unlock experience less frustrating for users.
The major changes users will notice, besides the fact that they look super slick, is the fact that the grey login screen is no more and the password field is now displayed on the lock screen itself. Moreover, there are new ways of activating the password field, using either a mouse click or scroll or by using a touchpad button or swipe gesture.
“This doesn’t necessarily change how many keystrokes or clicks are required to unlock, but it does reduce how many distinct visual steps are involved, and makes the whole experience feel faster and more direct,” said Allan Day.
Ease of use is great, but unlocking your computer can also be joyful. That’s way the new login and unlock screens in GNOME 3.36 comes with updated visuals, such as the use of a blurred background, new layout of the authentication elements, the transition from the clock to the password field, and the subtle use of animation for prompts about failed logins.
For future releases of the GNOME desktop environment, the GNOME design team plans to further improve these designs with the ability to view the last-logged in user instead of selecting the user from a list, as well as to implement user avatars with blurred backgrounds in the user selection screen.
The redesigned login and unlock experience landed quite late in the development cycle of the GNOME 3.36 desktop environment, due for release on March 11th, 2020. Therefore, the development team are testing it thoroughly, but they also need your help to test it so they can polish it before it hits the streets.
Source and images: Allan Day
Last updated 4 years ago
