Edit: Read also five most downloaded gnome shell extensions.
This is a list of five must have gnome shell extensions. You can find the commands below on how to install each extensions. After installing you need to restart gnome shell (type alt + f2 and press ‘r’) or logout and back again for the extension to start working.
Edit: With the awesome (gnome) shell live extension enabling and disabling you do not need to restart for the shell to working.
1) Alternative status menu
This is one of the most important and immediate changes required in the new gnome shell. The user menu have only a ‘suspend’ shown by default; no restart, no shut-down, no hibernate. It is more funny if you have only one account in your desktop/laptop. You will get options like logout and switch user in the menu but still no shut-down or restart.
Except the gnome decision makers, everyone else (I guess that includes many gnome developers) is using the alternative status menu which makes sense if you have at least basic common sense. This adds the hibernate and shut-down options back to the menu. No more Google searching or pressing if you want to shut-down your computer. You can save countless amount of energy by not pressing unnecessary keys to accomplish basic tasks.
Type the following command in terminal to get it installed.
yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu
A rather small name for the extension!!!!
In all operating systems, you can also install this extension by going here and clicking on the on/off button on the page.
I use a slightly modified menu that do not have suspend and switch user options.
2) Alternative alt-tab
This extension provides an alternative alt-tab that is window based. The default alt-tab in Gnome shell is application based. Multiple windows of same application are grouped together. If you want separate entries for each windows, then you could use this extension.
Type in terminal
yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab
In all operating systems, you can also install this extension by going here and clicking on the on/off button on the page.
I rather start to like the default alt-tab. You could change between windows of the same application by clicking on alt + (the key above the tab key in your keyboard). If you want to change between different windows then use alt + tab keys. This is a cool feature to have. So this may not be a must have extension in the future for me.
3) Places menu
This extension adds a nice new menu to the right hand system indicator area at the top panel. The menu contain your home and favourite locations including the locations of devices connected. This is a very nice and useful feature.
Type in terminal
yum install gnome-shell-extensions-places-menu
The only concern here is the menu does not contain icons from the default symbolic icon set. So, this makes this menu feels like out of place in the otherwise beautiful gnome top panel. Hopefully this will get solved in the future versions.
In all operating systems, you can also install this extension by going here and clicking on the on/off button on the page.
4) Weather extension
The weather is an important part of our life and I like to keep an eye on the weather conditions. There is an extension which helps you to have a weather notification on the panel itself. This extension adds a notification and a menu next to the dateNtime menu at the center of the panel. This is a rather new extension and still have some rough edge to it.
Unfortunately there is no way you can install this using a simple terminal command. This extension is hosted in git; get it from here. You could either use git core to get this installed or rather download the folder to your computer. Extract the content and copy the folder ‘weather@venemo.net’ inside to the /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions folder.
It is not yet available in the extensions website.
5) No a11y extension
One of the nuisances of the gnome shell is the accessibility menu that is always visible in the panel. For a normal user this menu does not serve any purpose at all. If you are one of those user who gets irritated by the menu and want to remove this from the panel, use this extension.
To install get the noa11y.tar.gz from here. Extract the contents and copy the folder inside to the /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions folder.
In all operating systems, you can also install this extension by going here and clicking on the on/off button on the page.
Justin Stories 
I installed all the available shell extensions using yum. I did logout/in, even rebooted, but none of them are working.
Then I tried this gnome tweak tool to enable them:
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/gnome-tweak-tool-gets-option-to-switch.html
But no extensions listed there..
Then I found this page:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10757178#post10757178
It appears that the version of the extensions and gnome-shell must match, but they dont even though they are both installed by yum.
# rpm -q gnome-shell
gnome-shell-3.0.2-1.fc15.i686
Extensions are kept in subfolders under /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
There you will find files named “metadata.json” for each extension.
Change the line that reads:
“shell-version”: [ “3.0.1” ],
into:
“shell-version”: [ “3.0” ],
Then they work for all gnome 3.0.x versions.
Thanks Joost,
I was wondering what happened to all my yum installed extentions.
Thank you so much! I have been searching everywhere for a solution to why the extensions aren’t working.
[…] I am not talking about the weather extension that is doing the rounds for the time being. This is not an extension. This is part of the core […]
Thank you! I did not install all of them, only the alternative status, the places, and followed the instructions for installing noa11y. You have just given me the cure for some of the irritations that I have had with Gnome Shell.
Thank you, I am glad to know that you found it helpful.
[…] it happens, a number of extensions are already available to put back some of the functionality that is missing in GNOME 3. Fedora, […]
Do you know how to get back the extract here feature in nautilus? I’m missing this a lot.
You should open the default download location of your browser. If its firefox, open the menu -> downloads, and from the list if items, select the archive and right click select open containing folder.
If you open firefox preferences menu, you could find the option that says ‘save downloads to’. That is the directory, your files will be saved to.
alternative-status-menu » GREAT!
extensions-places-menu » Nice!
How in the world do I get the extension from github? The documentation, both online and on my computer is useless and very involved. At no point does it say anything about how to download a file someone linked to. Could someone please post the correct switches to download the weather extension without having to setup a repository?
Thanks, sign me “Feeling like a newb”.
There is a ‘downloads’ button in the github page that is linked from here. Its not easily recognisable and is on the righthand side of the screen midway from top to bottom.
You click on it and download the archive to your computer.
Try something like this:
$ sudo yum install git
$ cd ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/
$ git clone https://github.com/simon04/gnome-shell-extension-weather.git gnome-shell-extension-weather
This should pull down the contents from the git repo and put it in a directory named “gnome-shell-extension-weather”.
I can’t install “gnome-shell-extension-weather” with the procedure you mentioned.
I restarted gnome-shell but extension-weather is not loaded.
This repository isn’t directly usable as an extension. I guess you need to download it to a different place, build and install it in your private extension folder.
I have installed every gnome-shell-extensions from Fedora repo….
Something I love so much is Gnome Tweak Tool for Gnome 3… it’s such a great tool to tweak latest awesome Desktop Gnome 3…
I use gnome shell and have a feel of good old classic gnome at once…. with this gnome tweak tool. It also can install extensions and theme….
[…] to make it a complete replacement for your good old Gnome 2.x. For the time being you can use these extensions to get some functionalities […]
[…] Complete Story […]
Good write up. I am not using G3 right now( I am on debian testing ). But, u have answered the most arghs!!!! related to G3. Many people using G3 would heave a sigh of relief with ur guide. excellent and to the mark.
[…] Hier der Link zu einem englischsprachigen Blog mit den „Five must have Gnome Extensions“. […]
[…] gnome shell顶部面板老是显示“通用性设置”，这对大多数同学来说作用不大，大家可以使用该扩展来移除“通用性设置”图标。如下图： 安装 需下载noa11y.tar.gz ，节约文件，复制文件到/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions目录下即可，然后重新加载gnome shell。 提示，上述扩展安装后，不会马上生效，大家需按住Alt+F2，输入 r ，重新加载gnome shell方可。 —-消息来源justinstories […]
I use weather applets a lot to track weather conditions for our planned destinations of travel and do not care much for those making GNOME featureless.
Hopefully whoever is deciding on how not to make GNOME valuable for users with versatility can get another job destroying another application or envirinment.
I am starting to check out the other desktops and am not now satisfied with GNOME.
[…] Five Must Have GNOME Shell Extensions — If you’re running Fedora 15 with GNOME 3, this list will come in […]
OMG it was really useful, I think I’m going to use them all (;
Thank you!
As it doesn’t work straight away, you may want to include a tip, press Alt+F2 and then write “r”, press enter and the shell will restart (useful for seeing the changes, like with the Alternative status menu)
Thanks so much. Every one of them have been very useful for me.
[…] https://justinstories.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/five-must-have-gnome-shell-extensions-for-fedora-15/ var addthis_language = 'en'; […]
The second step, the Alternative alt-tab made my system unestable since a while ago! I don’t know who is to blame, if gnome 3 or the extension app, but if you have any problem, just unistall it changing the “install” bit with “remove”, so it’d be:
yum remove gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab
Hope this helped someone!
noa11y.tar.gz is now noa11y-1.0.tar.gz. It is downloadable at http://fpmurphy.com/gnome-shell-extensions
The Places extension causes my gnome shell to crash when switching users. At least, that seems to be the case. Since removing it on a couple of systems I haven’t noticed the crashes any longer. Unfortunately, I really miss the functionality. Otherwise I quite like gnome shell these days, although I do find it frustrating going from my work computer (Ubuntu gnome 2) to home desktop/laptop/server (Fedora 15 gnome 3).
One more: https://github.com/lzap/disable-window-animations
[…] Justin Stories: Five must have Gnome shell extensions for Fedora 15 […]
Is there any extension available to add a world time list, to the time and date menu of Gnome3?
I do not know of any extensions with such a feature but this will be available in gnome 3.2 by default.
[…] gnome shell顶部面板老是显示“通用性设置”，这对大多数同学来说作用不大，大家可以使用该扩展来移除“通用性设置”图标。如下图： 安装 需下载noa11y.tar.gz ，节约文件，复制文件到/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions目录下即可，然后重新加载gnome shell。 提示，上述扩展安装后，不会马上生效，大家需按住Alt+F2，输入 r ，重新加载gnome shell方可。 —-消息来源justinstories […]
I missed an extension to dock applications to panel…
I yesterday tried to write it:
http://blog.titok.info/index.php?entry=entry110914-153722
Anybody know how to switch the dasher panel and dynamic windows view. I think the developers must left-handed. It’s good to change the hotspot but you still have to mouse over to the left t start an application
Awesome content. I got most of the things i wanted. How do i remove suspend switch user etc just like the way you’ve got yours tweaked. I don’t want them either. I am referring to the first modification 🙂 yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu ?
How do I install the weather extension? I downloaded the folder from github, read the readme, saw “Make sure you have the `libglib2.0-dev` package” but cannot find any libglib packages in Yumex. And sure enough, I did get the GLIB_GSETTINGS error.
Then I run the command mentioned and I see “Makefile:425: *** missing separator. Stop.” when make stops.
How did you get it to work?
Aha I found a tutorial!
http://dnmouse.org/autoten/gnome-3-extra-tips/192-gnome-shell-weather-extension.html
Justin the extension gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab didnt worked fine for me.
I installed it and BOOM… every time that I used “alt tab” Gnome breaks down… do you know any solutions or workarounds?
I used the 1st e 3rd extensions. This is working
Pretty nice work altogether, but how did you manage to remove the switch user option from the menu ?
My friend the idea of accessibility icon is that impared users could use yours or anybody else computer with easy access to their accessibility options. Using computer that is not accessible for ill users is more iritating that 16x6px icon for healthy users 😉
Its working properly and easy to use