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23.0 Galaxy Release (April 2023)

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Highlights

Themes!

Show off your colours in Galaxy 23.0 with the ability to choose your own theme! As as a user you will be able to select between a number of built-in themes. Server administrators may choose to provide additional themes for their users. If your admin has enabled this feature, you will find it under User → Preferences, just look for the bright red “New!”

The top bar of Galaxy is shown across four different themes in a single image, diagonal cuts joining the images so it looks like a continuous Galaxy screenshot. The four themes shown are the progress pride flag in the masthead, the classic Galaxy dark blue, a black theme with pink highlights, and then a lighter blue theme.

New Font

You might have noticed Galaxy looking a wee bit different. The 0s and Os are now more distinctive, as well as a host of other characters, thanks to us switching to Atkinson Hyperlegible, a font that should be a lot friendlier for folks with visual impairments. In general this font is much easier to read for everyone and we’re excited for it!

New History Multi-view

The old history multi-view which loaded every history and every dataset is now gone. In its place is a much faster and easier to navigate history multi-view which lets you select just the histories you want to look at, without the distraction of your other analyses! Now you can focus on the relevant data.

Power User Features

Are you a long time Galaxy user looking to up-skill into a real power user? Check out these new features to take your skills to the next level.

Conditional Workflow Steps

You can now dynamically decide if steps of your workflow should be skipped. Simply select a tool or subworkflow step that you want to conditionally skip and switch the “Conditionally skip step?” toggle. A new boolean input named “when” appears. You can now connect a boolean parameter to this input, and if the value of the boolean parameter is true the step will run, otherwise it will be skipped. Outputs from conditional steps are marked as optional and can only be connected to optional inputs. If you want to build an “or” switch you can connect the two branches of a conditional to the “Pick parameter value” expression tool. Boolean parameters can be specified by a user or computed within your workflow. For more details check out the Galaxy Training Network tutorial on workflow parameters.

Screenshot of a workflow with 2 conditional steps. Step 1 is a data input, Step 2 is a text parameter with 2 possible pre-specified values, bowtie2 and bwa-mem2. Step 3 and Step 4 use "Map parameter value" expression tool to generate a boolean value based on the user selection in Step 2. Step 3 is connected to the conditional `when` parameter in Step 5 (Bowtie2), Step 4 is connected to the conditional `when` parameter in Step 6. The outputs of Bowtie2 and bwa-mem2 are connected to the "Pick parameter value" tool, which selects the first non-null dataset. The output of the "Pick parameter value" tool is a normal dataset output and is connected to "Samtools view".

Faster Upload

Simply drag files from your desktop into Galaxy and they’ll start uploading immediately! It’s faster than ever to start analysing your data.

Drag and Drop Between Histories

With the new advent of the new Multi-History mentioned above, we now also can drag and drop between histories! And no longer are you restricted from dragging into the current history, instead you can drag files back and forth between all histories as well.

Change the Datatype of a Collection

It’s easier than ever to change the datatype of every dataset in a collection using the pencil icon. Previously this could be achieved through the Apply Rules tool, however now it can be done just like with individual datasets.

RO-Crate / Biocompute Workflow Invocation Export

Galaxy now offers two options for packaging and publishing workflow artifacts: RO-Crate and BioCompute Object. These standard-based formats provide a way to bundle research data and metadata in a structured way. To learn more about these formats, check out RO-Crate and BioCompute Objects. You can directly export these files to any writeable remote file sources that have been configured (e.g., FTP or Dropbox).

History Export Tracking

A new History export user interface is now available that makes it easier to download your histories. You can export your history in a variety of formats, and either download it directly, or save it to a remote file source for more permanent storage. Plus, every time you export your history to one of these remote sources, a new tracking record is created with a button that lets you re-import that history snapshot with ease.

Workflow Report - Collapsible Boxes

Based on user feedback of what features were missing from workflow reports, support for collapsing large boxes has been added to the Workflow Reports editor. Simply add collapse="Your Box Title" and large elements will be hidden with just a clickable box titled “Your Box Title”. Great for including large graphs or tables that may be important, but not relevant to show initially.

New Datatypes

Builtin Tool Updates

Release Testing Team

A special thanks to the release testing team for testing many of the new features and reporting many bugs:

Release Notes

User facing release notes compiled and written by Helena Rasche.

Please see the full release notes for more details.

To stay up to date with Galaxy’s progress, watch our screencasts; visit our community Hub; and follow us on Bluesky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn.

You can always chat with us on Matrix.

Thanks for using Galaxy!

The Galaxy Team