GNOME aims to make and keep the desktop environment physically and cognitively ergonomic for people with disabilities.

The GNOME Human Interface Guidelines try to take this into account as far as possible but specific issues are solved by special software.

Particular utilities are registered with ATK using Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI), and become globally used throughout the desktop.

Several assistive technology providers, including Orca screen reader and Dasher input method, were developed specifically for use with GNOME.

Clicking on the Activities button, moving the mouse to the top-left hot corner or pressing the Super key brings up the Overview.

[21] Beginning with GNOME 3.8, GNOME provides a suite of officially supported GNOME Shell extensions that provide an Applications menu (a basic start menu) and a "Places menu" on the top bar and a panel with a windows list at the bottom of the screen that lets users quickly minimize and restore open windows, a "Show Desktop" button in the bottom left corner, and virtual desktops in the bottom right corner.

These tools collectively provide a comprehensive development environment for creating software that aligns with the GNOME desktop and its design principles.

[34] GNOME was started on 15 August 1997[9] by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena [es] as a free software project to develop a desktop environment and applications for it.

[35] It was founded in part because the K Desktop Environment, which was growing in popularity, relied on the Qt widget toolkit which used a proprietary software license until version 2.0 (June 1999).

[46] The name "GNOME" was initially an acronym for GNU Network Object Model Environment, referring to the original intention of creating a distributed object framework similar to Microsoft's OLE,[47][48] but the acronym was eventually dropped because it no longer reflected the vision of the GNOME project.

De Icaza and Nat Friedman founded Helix Code (later Ximian) in 1999 in Massachusetts; this company developed GNOME's infrastructure and applications and was purchased by Novell in 2003.

[61][62] The handling of windows, applications, and files in GNOME 2 is similar to that of contemporary desktop operating systems.

In the default configuration of GNOME 2, the desktop has a launcher menu for quick access to installed programs and file locations; open windows may be accessed by a taskbar along the bottom of the screen; and the top-right corner features a notification area for programs to display notices while running in the background.

However, these features can be moved to almost any position or orientation the user desires, replaced with other functions, or removed altogether.As of 2009, GNOME 2 was the default desktop for OpenSolaris.

In 2008, an increasing discontent among the community and developers about the lack of project direction and technical progress prompted the announcement of GNOME 3.0.

[66] While GNOME 1 and 2 interfaces followed the traditional desktop metaphor, the GNOME Shell adopted a more abstract metaphor with a minimalistic window management workflow, where switching between different tasks and virtual desktops occurs in a separate area called the overview.

[74] Aiming to provide an easy-to-use and uncluttered user experience has led to some criticized design decisions, like the removal of minimize and maximize buttons, the simplification of configuration options, and visual clues that could lead to confusion.

[102] GNOME 42 was released on 23 March 2022 [103] and introduced the option to screen record and switch light/dark themes using a new GTK API called Libadwaita.

Other updates to the system bar included a new camera usage indicator and a keyboard shortcut to open and close the quick settings menu.

[109] Other system changes included accessibility improvements and experimental support for variable refresh rates.

GNOME 47 (Denver) was released on 18 September 2024 and featured user-chosen accent color support in Libadwaita applications as well as many other smaller improvements.

However, individual module maintainers coordinate their efforts to create a full GNOME stable release on an approximately six-month schedule,[117] alongside its underlying libraries such as GTK and GLib.

[citation needed] yy indicates a point release, e.g. 3.20.6; these are made on a frequency of weeks in order to fix issues, add non-breaking enhancements, etc.

[citation needed] GNOME 40 started a new versioning scheme in which a single number is incremented with each biannual release.

Most vendors only use stable and tested versions of GNOME and provide it in the form of easily installed, pre-compiled packages.

[citation needed] A number of build scripts (such as JHBuild or formerly GARNOME) are available to help automate the process of compiling the source code.

The GLib data structures and utilities library, GObject object and type system and GTK widget toolkit comprise the central part of GNOME development platform.

[154] The GNOME desktop environment does not consist solely of the graphical control element library GTK and the core applications that make use of it.

[160] As systemd is available only on Linux, the proposal led to a discussion of possibly dropping support for other platforms in future GNOME releases.

[140] In November 2012 the GNOME release team concluded there will be no compile time dependency on systemd for basic functionality, like session tracking.