Hey everyone!

Following up on my previous post about grid-desktop, I’ve been busy adding new features, polishing existing widgets, and fixing bugs based on usage and feedback.

Here is what’s new in the latest update:

• Binary Clock Widget: For the true geeks who prefer reading time in bits. Fully native, fits cleanly into the grid layout alongside the analog and digital clocks.
• Moon Phase Widget: A brand-new widget displaying the current lunar phase, illumination percentage, and visual representation directly on your desktop.
• GNOME Online Accounts (GOA) Mail Integration: The mail widget is no longer just a placeholder or mock layout — it now hooks directly into GNOME Online Accounts to pull and display your actual unread email counts in real-time.
• Lava Lamp Polish & Fixes: Tweaked the rendering, physics, and performance logic so the blobs animate much smoother and without the visual glitches from earlier builds.
• General Cleanup: Further refinements to Clutter canvas drawing, global styling inheritance, and grid snapping across different widget sizes (1x1, 2x2, etc.).

No external CSS bloat — everything is rendered cleanly with Clutter and stays lightweight, configurable either globally from the extension prefs or individually per widget.

Check out the repo here:
https://github.com/pelach/grid-desktop

Is it possible for someone to please please create a Gnome extension to display file copy progress?

Its frustrating to just have the little pie chart in Nautilus that's very inconspicuous.

I did a mockup to give an idea.

i find myself changing between my day wallpaper and night one its getting kinda annoying... tbh i tried finding one but its unsupported... and the others is only spans an hour... Please help

Hi everyone,

I ran wayland-info in my terminal and it lists support for wp_tearing_control_manager_v1:

interface: 'wp_tearing_control_manager_v1',              version:  1, name: 43

Does GNOME really support it, or is wayland-info just wrongly reporting it?

Like many of you, I've sometimes wished GNOME Software felt snappier and had fewer bugs. So I asked myself: is it fixable? I spent a month finding out with an LLM, and my answer is: it is.

This is a proof of concept, not a replacement and not a competing project. It's meant to show that it can be done, and it turned out fun enough to share. This can never be upstreamed as gnome-software bans all use of AI, but maybe it can be an inspiration for the devs. I documented every upstream bug I found with a proposed fix.

The video runs the same script on the same machine, with the same Flatpak remotes and the same Fedora packages (experiment vs. GNOME Software 51.0):

• Launch until the overview shows its apps: 1.6–2.0 s vs. 2.8–7.4 s
• Open Games until every tile has its icon: 0.35–0.38 s vs. 7.6–11.8 s
• Open Firefox until its first screenshot shows: 0.27–0.35 s vs. 5.1–5.2 s
• Search "text" until the results show: 0.43–0.45 s vs. 1.2–1.3 s
• The whole run, pauses included: 8.2–8.7 s vs. 27.8–28.5 s

The idea: all app state lives in one store that is only written on the main thread, once per frame. Plugins send what they find to the store as messages, and the pages are views of it that update by diff and keep their rows. On top of that come some smaller things: category pages only ask for the icons on screen, search only refines what it shows, details pages show right away and fill in slower data (sizes, permissions) as it arrives, the ratings file is parsed on a thread, and Games uses a grid view.

About the LLM: almost all of the code was written with generative AI. That was the other half of the experiment: can an LLM, with careful testing, do real work on a big desktop app? gnome-software doesn't accept AI generated contributions, and I fully respect that. Please send any problems to the experiment's tracker, not to GNOME.

How it's tested: 45 flow tests drive the real app through scenarios (like installing an app while its details page is loading) and check what every frame shows. A performance check runs start, categories, details, search and scrolling against a baseline before every build. I use it daily on Silverblue (Fedora 45 beta, there is no backport for 44 or Debian stable). It's been tried on only a few machines and it handles installing software on your system, so please read the changes before installing it.

Try it

Safest: next to your normal Software, any distribution. CI builds a Flatpak bundle that installs as "Software (Development)" and leaves your normal Software alone. Get gnome-software-dev.flatpak from the latest flatpak bundle job in the pipelines, then:

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://nightly.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo flatpak install --user gnome-software-dev.flatpak flatpak run org.gnome.Software.Devel

(The Development build can't open apps it installed.)

For the adventurous, replacing the system app:

Fedora 45 Workstation (Copr: Fedora's 51.0 package with the experiment on top, dnf5 plugin included):

sudo dnf copr enable user2f81ca72f/gnome-software-next sudo dnf upgrade gnome-software

Back to the original one: sudo dnf copr remove user2f81ca72f/gnome-software-next && sudo dnf distro-sync gnome-software

Fedora 45 Silverblue:

sudo curl -fLo /etc/yum.repos.d/gnome-software-next.repo \ https://gitlab.gnome.org/user_c1a5830a/gnome-software-next/-/raw/next/contrib/gnome-software-next.repo sudo rpm-ostree override replace --experimental --from repo=gnome-software-next \ gnome-software gnome-software-rpm-ostree

Back: sudo rpm-ostree override reset gnome-software gnome-software-rpm-ostree and remove the .repo file.

Debian testing has a signed apt repo too, see the README.

Source, README, architecture notes and the list of upstream bugs found along the way: https://gitlab.gnome.org/user_c1a5830a/gnome-software-next

I'd love to hear what you think, and how it behaves on your machine!

I also hope for a respectful and constructive discussion. I don't like the big AI companies at all, they shouldn't exist, but I also believe these new tools are here to stay and we should use them to improve our beloved open source DE.

Hi everyone,

I need a little help here.

Somehow, the dock's background has disappeared and I don't know how to fix it.

Look, normal Gnome:

My gnome:

Any ideas how to fix it?

Cheers

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm excited to share a major update for Desktop Widgets! I’ve been working on rethinking the user experience and visual design to make your desktop look and feel much more modern.

https://reddit.com/link/1xdm749/video/p5teqhgtg9xh1/player

✨ What’s new in this update:

• Completely redesigned UI: Clean, modern, and intuitive interface.
• Smooth Animations: Fluid transitions and responsive UI elements.
• Glassmorphism / Liquid Glass Effect: Beautiful frosted glass visual effects for a sleek look.
• Performance & Stability Fixes: Better efficiency with lower resource usage.

Check out the code and try it out on GitHub:

👉https://github.com/r3nhick/desktop-widgets

I’d love to hear your feedback, suggestions, or any bugs you run into! Feel free to star the repo if you like the project ⭐

https://reddit.com/link/1xdkwzu/video/l80kbbu769xh1/player

Been annoyed by Brave scrolling way too fast when ever I use the touch-pad on gnome since gnome doesn't expose any touch-pad sensitivity controls, and I found this GitHub repo: https://github.com/daniel-g-carrasco/wayland-scroll-factor/ and feel like it deserves a shout out.

It fixes the GNOME Wayland Chromium browsers read raw touch-pad events and ignore GNOME's settings, so they scroll way too fast. This scales it down.

There's also an additional extension called https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10008/touchpad-speed-control/ that can set it on a per app basis so apps like the nautilus don't get affected :)

A quick update for Letter, featuring minor additions and a bug fix, bringing it to version 1.7.1.
As always, available for download as FLATPAK!

This version highligths:

• [Fix] Message-list preview no longer shows Camel image placeholders such as [image: Google] or [Sign.png]. Image-only snippets stay empty; real text after a logo alt remains.
• [Fix] Do not abort when a Camel preview contains invalid UTF-8.
• [New] Main menu → Check for Updates… queries the latest GitHub release and shows whether Letter is current, or offers to open the newer release page.
• [New] Compose: Ctrl+Return (and Ctrl+keypad Enter) sends the message.
• [New] Move to Folder: with a writable folder focused, Return (or double-click) confirms the move.

Full CHANGELOG!

And here my GitHub page: https://github.com/stalvatero/letter

Regarding the use of LLMs, I should clarify that I use Cursor as my primary IDE; it assists me mainly by helping to find APIs and integrations that would otherwise have required extensive online research. The ideas, code review, and final validation are all my own.

I would welcome further feedback 😄

I'm currently trying to develop and test my own GNOME extension, and I saw that using a VM was recommended to make the whole process easier. I also want my extension to be compatible with different GNOME shell versions, so I downloaded GNOME boxes. However, I can't find older versions of GNOME os in the Boxes app or on the website.

is there a way to download older versions of GNOME os to test my extension with different GNOME shell versions? (if there is a better way to tackle this issue, please enlighten me)

Hello everyone. I have a tablet that I am running Gnome on and I am wondering if anyone is doing the same and has any tips or recommendations for creating a better touch experience? It's a pretty great touch experience as it is tbf but if anyone has any apps/settings/shell extensions they use to take it a step further than that would be great.

I love the Gnome workflow logic, but I regularly encounter a little nuisance and I'm wondering if there is anything that can help.

I use the keyboard a lot to open and move windows around but occasionally, I need to drag and drop a file from nautilus to some browser window or an email composition window. The thing is that Files always opens in the middle of the screen and almost always ends up covering the window I want to drag and drop the file to.

Thus, every time I have to first open Files, move it out of the way to some place on screen that exposes the target window and then drag and drop the file.

This is not a big deal, but I would love if there was a way to make Files open always in one corner of the screen.

At the moment, I'm experimenting with a tiling extension (Tiling Shell), but I'm not sure this is the way I would like to go.

Any suggestions?

Olá, tudo bem com vocês?

Pessoal, sou novo no GNOME e gostaria de algumas dicas sobre extensões. Quero personalizá-las, mas não sei muito sobre extensões. Gostaria de algumas recomendações sobre quais são boas e interessantes de se ter.

For me, on gnome 50, workspaces reset and every open app gets dumped into workspace 1 when I dock my laptop, switch displays, sometimes even after suspend etc.

Is it the same for you guys or is there something wrong on my end?

I've been working on a new update for Advanced Media Controller, my open-source GNOME Shell extension for media controls. This update brings new customization options, improvements to album-art handling, and a more immersive now-playing experience.

✨ What's new?

🎚️ Animated progress slider – Custom progress-bar animations with support for custom themes.

🖼️ Immersive album-art cover – A more visual now-playing experience with album artwork taking center stage.

💿 Vinyl animation – An optional spinning-record effect for album art.

🎵 Time-synced lyrics – Lyrics support for compatible tracks.

🌐 Better multi-player switching – Switch between supported MPRIS players, including browser media sessions.

⚡ Album-art handling improvements – Better request cancellation and cleanup when tracks change or artwork requests are interrupted.

🎨 Custom theme support – Install supported themes from URLs or create your own for the extension's progress slider.

🌍 Translations and compatibility improvements – Continued improvements across supported GNOME Shell versions.

The aim is to make media controls feel like a natural part of GNOME while giving users more control over how the now-playing interface looks and behaves.

Just to clarify the theming aspect: custom slider themes only affect Advanced Media Controller's own interface, not GTK applications in general. The extension also supports falling back to the native GTK slider.

🔗 Try it out:

GNOME Extensions: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/9184/advanced-media-controller/

Source code: https://codeberg.org/sanjai-shaarugesh/Advanced-media-controller

Theme installation guide: https://codeberg.org/sanjai-shaarugesh/Advanced-media-controller/src/branch/main/THEMES.md

Theme development documentation: https://codeberg.org/sanjai-shaarugesh/Advanced-media-controller/src/branch/main/THEME_SYSTEM.md

Community themes: https://codeberg.org/sanjai-shaarugesh/Demons-slayer-themes

The project is open source, and I'm continuing to improve it. Feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions are welcome!

Hey everyone! Just released version 12 of the Draw on Gnome annotation tool. It now works with GNOME 51.
Available here: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7921/draw-on-gnome/
Docs: https://daveprowse.github.io/Draw-On-Gnome/
Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d7UrRNri6Q
Github repo: https://github.com/daveprowse/Draw-On-Gnome

Enjoy!

(This one is closed, the issue was the classic mode being turned on. Thank you for your help) Hi everyone, I just recently encountered a peculiar issue and since I was not able to figure our the reason myself, I decided to ask here.

I am running Fedora 44 with Gnome shell 50.6

The issue is that the top bar had suddenly become white. I did not notice the exact moment when it did happen. Possibly, the laptop shut down during a system update.
Below is provided what have I checked so far
- The issue is reproducible only for main user, thus I tend to think that it might be with some of configs. The other user has the bar the usual grey-ish colour.
- I was using an Open Bar extension. It had painted it purple. It was when I first noticed the issue, the pop-up became white first. It can be seen on the second image

- The issue persisted even after turning off all of the extensions
- Reapplying styles in the extension did not help
- I have tried to clear configs of the extension, and to re-install shell.

I would appreciate any advice on this :)

Look beautiful. Made by me