GTK 4.22 to Natively Support SVG – Including Animations

GTK has long supported Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for icons but with up until recently relying on the external librsvg library, the integration hasn't been perfect. But Red Hat engineer Matthias Clasen has been working on having the GTK toolkit natively support SVG.

The GTK 4.22 toolkit will be properly supporting SVG vector graphics natively within the toolkit and support for SVG animations and the like. Matthias Clasen has been building up GTK's own SVG capabilities in recent months rather than relying on librsvg and trying to workaround its limitations.

Clasen noted in a blog post today that it's still a subset of the full SVG specification but appears to be enough for the vast majority of icons and even SVG animations tested.

Those wanting to learn more about GTK 4.22's improved SVG support can find out all of the interesting details via the GTK blog.