The power of Gnome Shell lies in its extensibility. It is this power that transforms the barely unusable vanilla Gnome Shell desktop environment into a powerful and extremely usable and productive desktop environment. Gnome shell has a number of useful installations to enhance the user experience. To learn how to install and enable them using the Gnome Tweak tool check out our post on Installing and using Gnome Shell. In this post, we will look at some must-have Gnome shell extensions
Favorites Panel Extension
This extension puts all the shortcuts in the favorites panel on the top panel. This gives a quick way to launch applications. However, the shortcuts cannot be added or removed from the top panel directly, you will have to do addition and deletion in the favorites panel only. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.
Favorites Panel at work
Shutdown Menu Extension
In Gnome Shell by default there is no option to Shutdown, Sleep, Standby or Hibernate the system directly. The power options can only be accessed after logging out of the Gnome Shell. This extension solves this annoyance by putting the shutdown option in the user menu. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.
Shut Down option in the usermenu
The Power options when clicked
Applications Menu Extension
This extension provides the Applications Menu by replacing the Activities on the Top left corner. Now we can forget that large tiled icons and browse the applications as we used to. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.
The Applications Menu Extension at work
Bottom Panel Extension
The Bottom panel extension creates a static panel at the bottom. This panel lists the open applications on that workspace in the left and adds a workspace switcher on the right side. The Workspace shortcuts are also changed to Ctrl+Alt+left and right instead of up and down. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.
The Bottom Panel Extension at Work
Move Clock Extension
This extension moves the clock to the right side next to the User Menu. This doesn’t give any kind of performance boost or productivity increase but puts the final piece of our Gnome2 experience in place. And I confess that this is not a must-have 🙂
Clock moved to the right
User Theme Extension
This extension helps you to choose the Gnome Shell themes using the Gnome Tweak Tool. With this extension enabled, the Gnome Tweak tool can list any Gnome Shell theme in ~/.themes or in /usr/share/themes. You can switch between the themes without reloading shell. Install it by running this in terminal:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme
Selecting Gnome Shell themes using the Gnome Tweak Tool
See our article Top 5 Gnome Shell Themes to try out really good shell themes.
Places and Bookmarks Extension
The Places and bookmarks extension adds the MyPlaces menu to the top bar. This reduces the need to open the file manager every time and navigate to the required folders. You can download it here.
The result of Places and Bookmarks menu Extension
You can also download the same extension to produce an iconized menu here.
Right Hot Corner Extension
This extension adds an extra hot corner to the right top corner which works similarly to the left corner. This reduces the work of dragging the mouse from the left corner to the right edge all the time to switch workspaces or move windows between workspaces. you can download it here.
If you are a bit uncomfortable with hot corners on both sides you can download this extension and shift the left corner to the right corner.
These are the ones that will help you increase your Gnome Shell Experience and productivity. if you find anything else more useful comment it here 🙂
