My Top Ten Must Have GNOME Extensions

brent

My favorite thing about this post? Attribution! You gave all software creators name credit and link. Right on, and nice to see.

Scotty-Trees

brent Honestly I was just trying to be as thorough as possible, but thanks for noticing!

Junglist thank you! I have tried Vitals as well, but for some reason it always offset/shifted my top panel icons over a few pixels, so instead I use Freon which is very similar, albeit a little more basic. I'm sure the Vitals dev will update to 3.34 though, they've been on top of every release since 3.18.

linny happy to share, thanks for stopping by and reading!

ruskofd I could survive on maybe 5 extensions, but I don't know about just 2! Hehe, as vanilla as possible is a good way to go, glad to hear others GNOME setups!

Junglist

Excellent list, you've included numerous extensions I already use, and some new to me that are very nice ideas as well.

The only extension I use that you haven't included is Vitals - it shows various system info you choose on the top bar.

According to the comments, it needs an update for GNOME 3.34, I hope it'll receive it, as it's a nice extension.

There are some extensions I used to use, and I'd like to use, but no longer work 100% correctly as of GNOME 3.32 (Pixel Saver, Pixel Saver Fork, NoTitleBar and others). I liked those extensions, as they removed the title bar from maximized windows, and instead displayed the title bar content in the top bar.

I think it has something to do with the application menu being disabled in Solus in the top bar, as they worked by substituting app menu in top bar with title bar content (yes, I tried them with app menu enabled in GNOME tweak tool).

linny

Very useful list! Thanks for sharing. 🙂

ruskofd

Nice list, thanks for sharing ! I only use two of them :

Dash to Dock : a must have
TopIconsPlus : provided by Solus

I try to keep my GNOME as vanilla as possible 😀

Junglist

Scotty-Trees
I've installed 2 additional extensions to fix up the icons at the top: Center Area Horizontal Spacing and Status Area Horizontal Spacing

ruskofd

Scotty-Trees Yeah, for me GNOME vanilla is perfect for me, I don't need additional stuff. I'm little bit KISS 😄

Scotty-Trees

Junglist Nice, I'm giving those a try now. Is there by chance one for the left side of the panel as well?

edit - found this one: Icon Area Horizontal Spacing

just

I'd add Animation Tweaks extension to the list. All Gnome3 graphical elements may be animated. The amount of available animations is impressive. All animations duration may be set to desired values, separately for each single animation.

Gnome3 looks really sweet with this extension. On par with Plasma, though nothing beats Compiz level.

Scotty-Trees

just That's a great one! Wish that type of functionality was integrated already into the settings.

Lucien_Lachance configuring the clock the way you like it is a great one! I like my notifications in the center so the default works fine for me, but it's great to give yourself different options. That's the beauty of the extension framework. Thanks very much for posting!

Lucien_Lachance

some that are a must for me:

clock override
Customize the date and time format displayed in clock in the top bar in GNOME Shell.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1206/clock-override/

No Topleft Hot Corner
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/118/no-topleft-hot-corner/

NoAnnoyance
Removes the 'Windows is ready' notification and puts the window into focus.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1236/noannoyance/

Panel OSD
Configuring where on the (main) screen notifications will appear
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/708/panel-osd/

Junglist

I've come upon a nice little nifty extension: tweaks in system menu, it adds a button in the top right dropdown menu to access gnome tweak tool.

I've also finally managed to replicate the old Pixel Saver functionality of removing titlebars from maximized windows and putting titlebar content on the top bar, by using 2 different extensions together:

GTK title bar - removes the titlebar from maximized windows
Window Title in Top Bar

I already had xprop installed, but I think it might be needed (not sure tho) for those 2 extensions (Pixel Saver needed it), so install it if they don't work.

sudo eopkg install xprop

[deleted]

Great list, but I am a bit apprehensive to install extensions that aren't in the repo. Should I be?

Junglist

[deleted] I've never had any issues because of extensions. If an extension doesn't work, I simply remove it. After removal you sometimes need to restart GNOME shell (so either reboot, relog, or do alt-f2 and type -r)

If you want to play it safe, disable the extensions from outside the repo before doing major GNOME upgrades, and enable them after the reboot.

Afaik the extensions don't make any permanent modifications to the system - if you remove an extension and restart the shell, it should be the same, as if the extension never was installed.

Scotty-Trees

[deleted] Any questions you might have about extensions have been answered over here:
https://extensions.gnome.org/about/
The main question is are extensions safe? Generally speaking yes. Extensions go through code review before they are uploaded to the extensions website. As for the extensions that are in the Solus repo, those extensions are guaranteed to support the latest GNOME, otherwise it wouldn't be in the repo. Hence being a curated rolling distro.

Now me personally, I think extensions are safe, they either work as advertised, or they don't really work at all. If it works and I need it, I'll keep it and make sure to check every so often if there are new updates for it. If an extension doesn't work or is buggy I'll a.) file a bug report and/or b.) uninstall that extension.

[deleted]

Ah ok cool, thank you all for the feedback. Would definitely keep this in mind.

shbach

Reviving this thread to list my top GNOME extensions:

KStatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator Support
- Not sure why Solus comes instead with TopIcons Plus which isn't actively maintained and tray icons don't seem to work as well
GSConnect
- Pretty much a must if you have an android phone. Integrates your desktop with your phone and vice versa
Weather In The Clock
- Nicely displays the weather in an integrated way with the system and updates based on location. Better than the similar OpenWeather
- Make sure you have gnome-weather installed
- Unfortunately automatic location doesn't seem to work on my Solus install (works on my Ubuntu install) but if you disable automatic location and set it manually it works
Bing Wallpaper Changer
- I've never used Bing but I must admit they are a fantastic source of high quality and relevant daily wallpaper
Vitals
- This is my favorite of the system monitor extensions I've tried
Dash to Dock
- Comes with Solus and for good reason
Workspaces to Dock
- A great companion to Dash to Dock
Dynamic Panel Transparency
- I'm a fan of transparency and like to see all of my wallpaper
- I've found 70% opacity to strike a good balance between eye candy and legibility
Transparent Notification and Transparent OSD
- More transparency!
- The default opacity is too transparent for my tastes. Unfortunately the extensions don't have an easy way to adjust that but you can modify the files at ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/transparentnotification@ipaq3870/stylesheet.css and ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/transparentosd@ipaq3870/stylesheet.css and change 0.25 to 0.7
Extensions Sync
- Now that we have all these extensions it's nice to have a way to sync them
- Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work on my Solus install (works on my Ubuntu install) but in theory this is a good extension to have

Bonus

I've been trying out tiling windows managers and the one I like the most so far is Tilingnome. Seems a bit glitchy sometimes though. Pop Shell looks promising but still in development.