Gnome is a great, low-distraction desktop environment but it’s certainly not perfect out of the box. Fortunately it’s easy to spruce up. Here are some of my favourite extensions!

Space Bar

I’ll start with an extension I really love and now consider crucial. Space Bar makes workspaces a lot more practical in Gnome. I have mine named so that each workspace has a specific purpose. A neat way to organise your in-use apps. Best used in conjunction with Auto Move Windows

Auto Move Windows

Allows you to configures apps to open in a specific workspace. Give those workspaces purpose!

Media Label and Controls (Mpris Label)

Not only shows you what’s playing in the top bar, but has configurable click functionality to play/pause, skip tracks, and more. Pretty great!

Resource Monitor

Keep an eye on those computer resources of yours with this highly configurable extension. I have mine set up to show CPU usage % and temperature, as well as RAM usage %. It does heaps more though, fill yr top bar.

Grand Theft Focus

Fixes some weird hidden window behaviour that happens far too often without it.

Battery Indicator Icon

Shows a nice icon and battery percentage in the top bar.

Favourites in AppGrid

I don’t know about you but even though I have an app favourited, I still want to see it in the AppGrid.

RebootToUEFI

Sometimes a dude just needs to reboot into UEFI (formerly known as BIOS). This adds the option to the shutdown menu.