GNOME pulls in experimental variable refresh rate (VRR) support for GNOME 46

After years of waiting, experimental support for variable refresh rate (VRR) has landed for GNOME, and thankfully it will be in the GNOME 46 release. The GNOME 46 release is due out around March 20th as per the release schedule, but a Release Candidate was just released for testing that also includes this new VRR code.

The Merge Request for "backends/native: Add support for variable refresh rate" that's been open since March 2020 was accepted and pulled in on March 2nd, 2024. Thanks to the approved Feature freeze exception, it was also accepted into GNOME 46.

Since the feature is noted to be experimental, it's currently hidden behind a gsetting. So unless GNOME user specifically set, they won't see the setting and Mutter's behaviour will remain the same. But if used you will end up seeing it in your GNOME settings for your monitor as per the UI freeze break request for Variable Refresh Rate:

Really good to see. Linux desktops in the last year have really begun to feel properly modern with more expected features being pulled in.