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Gnome Tweaks 40 No Longer Manage Extensions, Use This Tool Instead

Last updated: May 16, 2021

Gnome Tweaks, one of the must have apps for configuring Ubuntu, removes GNOME Shell Extensions support by releasing version 40.

Which means in next Ubuntu release which will ship with Gnome 40+, you have to use another tool to manage Gnome Shell Extensions.

If you have tried out Fedora 34, you should already see the prompt at first launch of Gnome Tweaks: “Extensions management has been moved to GNOME Extensions”.

The “new” tool “GNOME Extensions” is available in Ubuntu universe repositories since Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. If you don’t have it, open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, and run command to install it:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-prefs

Then you can open it from system app launcher.

Different to the extensions tab in Gnome Tweaks, the GNOME Extensions tool displays built-in Gnome Shell extensions and user installed extensions separately.

Besides the slider icons to toggle on/off extensions and gear buttons to change extension settings, there’s a triangle icon after each extension. Clicking on the icon will expand the extension with a brief description as well as the website and remove buttons.

In addition, Fedora users can get the tool by installing gnome-extensions-app package. Other Linux with Gnome Desktop can install the flatpak package.

In Gnome Shell
 

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    12 responses to Gnome Tweaks 40 No Longer Manage Extensions, Use This Tool Instead

    1. shkrmkr September 21, 2021 at 4:48 am

      Merci beaucoup, Ji!

    2. Zolos0c0 April 20, 2022 at 5:37 pm

      This was damn helpful! Thank you very much Ji

    3. Anon April 28, 2022 at 11:28 pm

      Thanks !

    4. Anon August 13, 2022 at 12:31 am

      Excelent!! Thank you!!!

    5. name August 23, 2022 at 1:34 pm

      So how do I install any extension?

      • Ji m August 25, 2022 at 1:44 pm

        Just install the agent package via command:

        sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

        Then, browse and install extensions from extensions.gnome.org.

        For Ubuntu 22.04, just search for and install “Extension Manager” from Ubuntu Software. The app lets you search and install Gnome Extensions

        • lostrobot November 15, 2022 at 6:07 pm

          whay??
          sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-prefs
          Reading package lists… Done
          Building dependency tree… Done
          Reading state information… Done
          Package gnome-shell-extension-prefs is not available, but is referred to by another package.
          This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
          is only available from another source

          E: Package ‘gnome-shell-extension-prefs’ has no installation candidate

          • Ji m November 16, 2022 at 11:40 am

            If you were running the command on a fresh installed system, try updating package cache either by launching “Software Updater” or via command:

            sudo apt update

            Also, make sure the ‘universe’ repository is enabled via “Software & Updates” utility.

    6. Howard November 16, 2022 at 7:23 pm

      Thanks Ji M,
      That helped a lot. I forgot to do the update.

    7. Ben in Seattle November 17, 2022 at 6:07 pm

      Thank you so much for this, Ji M! I wish they had left a link in the Gnome Tweaks to run the new extensions manager. By the way, when running gnome-shell-extension-prefs from the command line, I see this message:

      Run gnome-extensions-app (from the gnome-shell-extension-prefs package)
      for extension management, or use the gnome-extensions command line tool.

      This was handy for me to know as I actually prefer command line programs. Since I have the bash-completion package installed, I can use the [Tab] key to complete the extension names, so I don’t to type the long IDs. (For example, “gnome-extensions disable na[Tab]” completes to “native-window-placement@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com”).