I’ve recently been tinkering around with Linux again on my 11-inch MacBook Air. I’m running Ubuntu 24.04 with Gnome and have just finished customizing the desktop to my liking with extensions.
I thought it was worth documenting what extensions I’m using in my setup, if only as something I can look back on if I ever need to replicate it on another machine. But I’m sure others will find some interesting extensions in the list that they might not have known about before.
- App menu is back — Just a simple extension that brings the app menu back to the top bar. I don’t have a list of open applications visible in Dash to Panel (the Taskbar), so I use this extension to indicate which application currently has focus.
- ArcMenu — A heavily customizable application menu. I’m currently using it to display Gnome’s built-in application overview. I’m using this over Gnome’s built-in app menu because it lets me configure a right-click menu that I’ve populated with shortcuts to some commonly accessed settings and applications.
- Auto Move Windows — It allows you to automatically move application windows to specific workspaces. This type of setup has never stuck for me on macOS at all, but it feels natural on Linux for some reason. I keep my browser — Brave — in my second workspace, Terminal in workspace three, media applications in workspace four, and everything else in the first workspace.
- Caffeine — This extension adds a button to the system menu that, when enabled, prevents your machine from going to sleep. It can also automatically trigger when you enter full screen in an application — useful when watching videos.
- Dash to Panel — I use this as a replacement for Gnome’s Top Bar. You can have it more closely match the functionality of Windows’ taskbar, but I prefer to keep it a bit more simple and, instead, use it for it’s more robust customization when compared to Gnome’s built-in features.
- Impatience — A very simple extension that adjusts the speed of animations in Gnome.
- Just Perfection — A large collection of tweaks you can use to customize the look and behavior of Gnome.
- NoAnnoyance (fork) — Gnome, for some reason, can often throw you these “Window is ready” notifications when opening apps. This extension prevents those from occurring and puts the associated window into focus.
- [QSTweak] Quick Setting Tweaker — An excellent extension for customizing and tweaking Gnome’s quick settings. You can hide sections of the menu, move notifications from the clock menu to the system menu, and more.
- Space Bar — This replaces the workspaces indicator in Gnome’s top bar with a more simple indicator that will display numbers for each workspace or a customizable name.
- Top Bar Organizer — Gnome doesn’t offer a way to organize items in the top bar. Some extensions have built-in functionality to change the order and location of their own icon/indicator, but for everything else, Top Bar Organizer does the trick.
