We give you a list of GNOME 40 extensions that would make your desktop experience even better. Have a look.
GNOME 40 was released a while back with revamped activities, workspace, and app grid view. And I am sure you are enjoying this modern desktop via Linux distribution offerings in Fedora or Arch Linux. The new GNOME 40 brings some fundamental changes and due to that, many customizations won’t work. The extensions that used to work in GNOME 3.x, series may not work at all unless it is ported to the new GNOME 40 series by the respective developer. Hence your favorite extensions may stop working.
But the good news is already most of the extensions are ported to GNOME 40 series and the rest are being worked upon. Here in this guide, we give you a list of 10 Extensions for the GNOME 40 desktop. These are tested and working well with GNOME 40. Take a look.
Table of Contents
Managing Extensions in GNOME 40
Before you try these extensions, you should be aware of a fundamental change in GNOME 40 concerning managing them. The GNOME Tweak tool which is used by many to manage Extensions (add, remove, change) earlier, would not work at all for managing the extension. Although the tool works fine in GNOME 40, the extension part is removed.
So to manage extensions in GNOME 40, the team brings a separate utility called “Extensions” which you need to install separately! Open your distribution Software app and search for Extension and install it. Or, you can get it from the Flathub repo via this link.
GNOME 40 Extensions – Top 10 List
The following list of extensions requires initial setup for GNOME extensions which you need to enable as per your Linux distribution. Refer to this guide for the initial setup.
1. Floating Dock
This is probably the best extension right now for the GNOME 40 desktop. So here’s the thing. In the new desktop layout, the dock shows when you click the superkey to bring up the activities overview screen, and then it goes away when you are back at your desktop. This sometimes causes problems for certain workflow, where you need to open certain apps which require moving away from the desktop to the activities overview screen.
So, the floating dock when activated gives you a dock that can be moved around anywhere on the screen. It can be on top of running applications, show indicators for open applications, and fetch shortcuts from your GNOME Favorite menu.
Here’s how it looks.
2. Blur My Shell
This is my favorite extension. The default GNOME’s activities background is grey while showing the wallpaper of the workspaces. This extension makes your background wallpaper blur and gives a nice blurry drop shadow to the workspaces. And it comes with many other options as well.
3. Just Perfection
This extension helps you to make any changes to your GNOME Shell. You can change the visibility of almost all components of GNOME Shell, behavior tweaks and customize panels, and more.
Try this extension out.
4. GNOME 40 UI Improvements
This extension enables you to hide the default search box in the Activities overview and show it when you start typing. It also gives you options to scale workspace thumbnails by 2x.
5. Arc Menu
The popular Arc Menu works perfectly well with GNOME 40 desktop. With Arc menu, you get a super productive menu with additional themes, options, and many new tweaks. This extension is recently ported to GNOME 40 and working well.
6. Espresso
Espresso provides a topbar icon that allows you to disable or enable the screensaver and auto suspend. You can also define other conditions that will disable the screensaver and auto suspend such as when an application is running in full-screen mode and/or when any one of a defined list of applications is running.
It is a fork of similar extension named Caffeine.
7. Weather in the clock
The GNOME desktop has its own weather app. But the app doesn’t show the weather in the top pane. So, this extension extends the GNOME weather app and gives you the option to show the weather of your selected location at the top panel bedside the clock.
8. User Themes
This extension helps you to load GNOME Shell themes from the user directory. If you are using any custom GNOME shell theme (.e.g from gnome-look.org), you can apply those using this extension.
9. Screenshot Tool
This extension is a must-have for your desktop. Once installed it gives you an option to snap a screenshot from your desktop. You have the ability to snap a part of the screen, entire desktop, using a timer, and many other features.
10. Net Speed Simplified
And the last one we feature is the net speed simplified. this extension shows the data transfer speed of your active network as upload/download speed right at the top panel.
Closing Notes
I hope these cool extensions help you to rediscover your love for the GNOME desktop with the new GNOME 40 version. I must say, these existing extensions look totally different on the new desktop which makes them more interesting. In the coming days, I hope many new extensions arrive tailored to GNOME 40. What is your favorite gnome 40 extension? Let me know in the comments below.
Cheers.
