Revamp Your GNOME Desktop with These Transformative Extensions

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Best Gnome Extensions to Transform Your Desktop
   1. Fly Pie: A Mouse-Centric Circular Menu
   2. Forge: A Powerful Tiling Window Manager
   3. Gradients: Customize the Look of Your Desktop
   4. Just Perfection: Small Tweaks to Improve Appearance and Functionality
   5. AATWS: Advanced Alt Tab Window Switcher
   6. Chce: Custom Hot Corners
   7. Login Manager Settings: Customize the Login Screen
   8. Pano: Clipboard Manager
   9. Miscellaneous Extensions
   10. Conclusion

Best Gnome Extensions to Transform Your Desktop

Gnome is known for its simplicity, but sometimes You may want to customize and enhance your desktop experience. Fortunately, Gnome offers a vast array of extensions that can completely transform how you use your desktop. In this article, we will explore the best Gnome extensions available that can take your desktop experience to the next level.

1. Fly Pie: A Mouse-Centric Circular Menu

If you prefer using your mouse over keyboard shortcuts, Fly Pie is an excellent extension for you. It is a circular menu that can be customized exclusively with your mouse. By moving your mouse in the general direction of an item and clicking to expand it, you can quickly launch applications, execute commands, switch between audio tracks, and much more. Fly Pie allows you to Create muscle memory by associating specific mouse gestures with certain actions. This extension is highly customizable in terms of appearance, colors, size, and structure. Installing Fly Pie is as simple as using the Extensions Manager app.

2. Forge: A Powerful Tiling Window Manager

If you enjoy tiling your windows but find Gnome's built-in options to be limited, Forge is a must-have extension. Inspired by Pop OS's Auto Tiling extensions, Forge offers similar functionality with even more features. Each new window opens in a new tile, and you can easily rearrange and organize your layout using either the mouse or a comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts. Forge also adds a highlight around the currently focused window and supports floating windows for smaller preferences. While it may not be fully compatible with upcoming versions of Gnome, Forge is a powerful alternative for tiling enthusiasts.

3. Gradients: Customize the Look of Your Desktop

If you want to personalize the look of your desktop without changing the overall theme, Gradients is the perfect tool. This application allows you to Apply color palettes to the default Adwaita theme in Gnome. While it won't alter the Shape of buttons or controls, Gradients will tint everything with colors of your choosing. You can create a visually pleasing desktop or go for a more eye-catching and vibrant style. Gradients can also apply the theme to Firefox, ensuring a consistent color scheme across your system. Simply install Gradients from Flathub and unleash your creativity.

4. Just Perfection: Small Tweaks to Improve Appearance and Functionality

Sometimes all you need are a few small tweaks to make your desktop experience just perfect. That's where the Just Perfection extension comes in. It offers various profiles to reduce the size of the top bar, hide elements like the activities button or the app menu, and control indicators and quick settings. With Just Perfection, you have complete control over every aspect of your desktop, from the panel to the window picker. Customize the panel size, icon size, padding between indicators, and more. This extension empowers you to fine-tune your Gnome experience to suit your preferences.

5. AATWS: Advanced Alt Tab Window Switcher

If the default Alt Tab window switcher doesn't meet your needs, AATWS (Advanced Alt Tab Window Switcher) is the solution. This extension allows you to customize the position and appearance of both the window switcher and the application switcher. You can group open windows by application, hide minimized windows, and display only the windows for the Current monitor. AATWS provides complete control over how you switch between windows and applications. It even offers a hot edge that can double as your dock, eliminating the need for additional extensions.

6. Chce: Custom Hot Corners

Hot corners are a handy feature for quickly accessing certain actions or functionalities. However, if you miss this functionality in Gnome, the Chce extension is here to help. Chce allows you to define actions when pushing your mouse into any corner of the screen, including with modifiers. You can customize actions for specific mouse movements, clicks, or even scrolling the mouse wheel. The list of actions is extensive, ranging from window management to system features like toggling the magnifier or displaying custom menus. Chce offers a powerful and customizable way to Interact with your desktop.

7. Login Manager Settings: Customize the Login Screen

Your desktop experience begins with the login screen, and the Login Manager Settings extension enables you to customize it to your liking. With this extension, you can change the background image, the font, and various options for the top panel. Adjust the sound theme, enable mouse-related features like disabling pointer acceleration or turning on night light. You can even display a welcome message, remove the user accounts list, or tweak the behavior of the power button and automatic suspend. This extension ensures a Cohesive experience from launching your system to accessing your desktop.

8. Pano: Clipboard Manager

Keeping track of your copied elements is made easier with the Pano extension. This clipboard manager displays all the items you've copied in a visual manner as a strip at the bottom of your screen. By pressing Shift + Super + V, you can access the strip and quickly retrieve any previously copied element. Pano supports links, text, emojis, files, images, code snippets, and color values, each with their own display style. You can customize the appearance of the strip and even exclude specific apps if you prefer not to display elements from them. Pano greatly enhances your workflow and productivity by providing easy access to your clipboard history.

9. Miscellaneous Extensions

Apart from the aforementioned extensions, there are several others that add small but useful tweaks to your Gnome desktop. Some notable ones include:

• Searchlight: A launcher or Spotlight equivalent that enhances the Gnome shell search without entering full-screen mode.
• Rounded Window Corners: Adds rounded corners to every window, even those that are not natively rounded.
• Desktop Icons: Restores the desktop icon functionality that some users enjoy.
• And more...

These extensions offer additional customization options and can further refine your Gnome desktop experience.

Conclusion

Gnome provides a simple yet powerful desktop environment, and with the right extensions, you can truly transform and personalize your experience. Whether you prefer a mouse-centric approach or a keyboard-focused workflow, there are extensions available to cater to your needs. From tiling window managers to customizable hot corners, clipboard managers to login screen customization, the possibilities are endless. Explore the vast world of Gnome extensions, and find the ones that resonate with you to create a truly unique desktop environment. Embrace the power of customization and make your Gnome desktop truly yours.