Adding an app shortcut icon to the Desktop in Ubuntu is not that easy for beginners by default. User has to first open the folder that stores the app shortcut files (usually /usr/share/applications). Then drag and drop the .desktop files into user’s “Desktop” folder. Make executable in file properties dialog and finally select ‘Allow Launching‘ via context menu option.

To make life easier, a Gnome extension is available to make the process to create a desktop shortcut for apps as easy as few clicks. Since Ubuntu uses full-screen app launcher, it’s not Windows 10/11 style drag and drop adding desktop icons. Instead, it adds ‘Add to Desktop‘ option to app icon’s context menu.

Like in Linux Mint and/or Zorin OS, user just needs to search the app in ‘Show Applications’ or ‘Activities’ overview screen, right-click on the app icon, and finally click ‘Add to Desktop’ to pin to desktop.

Install ‘Add to Desktop’ Extension:

1. To install a Gnome extension, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command to make sure the ‘chrome-gnome-shell‘ package is installed.

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

2. Next go to extension web page via the link button below and turn on the toggle icon to install it:

Don’t see the toggle icon? Install browser extension via ‘Click here to install browser extension‘ link and refresh the web page.

NOTE: The extensions support for all recent Gnome versions, so it works on all current Ubuntu releases including Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10. For other Linux with GNOME (e.g., Debian, Fedora), user needs to enable desktop icon support first (e.g., using Desktop Icon NG).

The extension should work immediately after installation. If not, try restarting Gnome Shell by either logging out and back in, or pressing Alt+F2, type r and hit Enter in ‘Run a Command’ box.

That’s all. Enjoy!

In Windows 10, user may right-click on the ‘File Explorer’ icon on panel to access pinned folders (e.g., Desktop, Downloads and Documents) quickly.

Ubuntu has first implemented this feature in Ubuntu 21.10, though it seems to be not working properly due to bug. Ubuntu 20.04 may manually add the context (right-click) menu options so user can right-click on the ‘Files’ icon to choose open favorite folders quickly.

Step 1: Copy File Manager .desktop file to local folder:

The file manager’s shortcut icon is handled by the relative .desktop file located in “/usr/local/applications” directory. It’s recommended to copy the file to local user directory, so the changes will function for current user only.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, copy the file to local directory via command:

sudo cp /usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

2. The file pasted into local directory is still owned by root. You may change the ownership by running command:

sudo chown $USER:$USER ~/.local/share/applications/org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop

Here $USER returns your current username.

Step 2: Edit the .desktop file and add more actions:

Now edit the .desktop file by running command in terminal:

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop

This command will open the file in Gedit text editor. When it opens, do following steps one by one:

1.) First, comment the “DBusActivatable=true” line by adding ‘#‘ at the beginning to disable it. Or, the ‘Exec’ value will be overrided.

2.) Add more values to “Actions“, such as downloads, documents, videos and whatever as you prefer. And, separate them via ‘;‘ without blank space.

Accordingly, add the “[Desktop Action downloads]”, “[Desktop Action documents]”, “[Desktop Action videos]” segments in the bottom. And, each segment has:

• “Name” to display in the right click menu.
• “Exec” command to open the desired folder, usually nautilus /home/USERNAME/folder

Step 3: Restart Gnome Shell to apply change:

After saving the file, restart Gnome Shell. In Ubuntu 20.04 default Xorg session, simply press Ctrl+Alt+F2, then try r in pop-up dialog and hit Enter.

The ‘Files‘ icon in left dock panel should now take use of the .desktop file in user directory and provide the quick access folders you set via right-click menu.

That’s all. Enjoy!

For people with dyslexia, scopic sensitivity, and related conditions, GNOME has an extension to adds a a translucent colored overlay over your desktop that may help.

It’s ‘ColorTint’ that adds an indicator applet in system tray area. User may click the drop down menu options to enable/disable the overlay, change the color via RGB slider bar, and adjust transparency via the Alpha slider.

How to Install ColorTint:

The extension works on GNOME 40 (Ubuntu 21.10) and GNOME 3.32 (Ubuntu 18.04), however lacks Ubuntu 20.04 support…

1.) Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install the ‘chrome-gnome-shell’ package to enable ability to install Gnome Extension via web broser:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

2.) Next, go to the link below and turn on the slider icon to install the extension:

Don’t see the toggle icon? Try installing the browser extension via the link in the page and then refresh it.

NOTE: The pre-installed Firefox in Ubuntu 21.10 is a Snap package that so far does not support for installing Gnome Extensions, use another browser or install Firefox as native Deb package via command:

sudo apt install firefox

And, to manage all installed extensions, install ‘Gnome Extensions‘ app either from Ubuntu Software or by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-prefs

That’s all. Enjoy!

How to hide top-bar, remove left dock and ‘Activities’, as well as toggle visibility of a few other Gnome Panel items are often asked questions. I used to use a few extensions to do the jobs until met ‘Just Perfection’.

Just Perfection includes a list of options to toggle visibility of GNOME UI Elements, customize panel size, padding, and change the behavior.

Its settings page starts with a portrait of an old man (Sorry for my poor cultural knowledge, I don’t know who is he).

An old man in Just Perfection settings

Just scroll down, and you’ll see the options to:

• override Gnome Shell theme to create a minimal desktop.
• Hide top-bar.
• Hide top-bar in overview screen.
• Remove top left “Activities” button.
• Disable (the focused) app-menu, clock, system tray menu (Aggregate menu).
• Remove search box, workspace picker, close button & caption of selected app in overview
• Disable the dock launcher, on screen display (when changing volume/brightness via Fn key).
• Disable hot corner watermark animation.
• Turn on/off icons for top-bar items.
• Remove panel arrow (little triangle behind app-menu and battery icon).
• Toggle hot corner, app gesture, type to search.
• Customize panel position (top or bottom), clock position, panel size and button padding, animation speed, etc.

How to Install Just Perfection Extension:

The extension so far supports Gnome from v3.36 to v41, so Ubuntu 20.04 and higher may install it via following steps:

1.) Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install required libraries:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell gnome-shell-extension-prefs

2.) Next, go to the extension web page and turn on the toggle icon to install it:

If you don’t see the toggle icon, click the link in the top to install browser extension and refresh the web page.

(NOTE: the default Firefox in Ubuntu 21.10 is a Snap app that does not support for installing Gnome Extensions.)

After installation, search for and open ‘Gnome Extensions‘ app from Activities overview screen and click the setting wheel for the extension to customize GNOME UI:



For Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux with GNOME desktop, here’s how to type unusual characters (e.g., Ẽ, ©, ™, ¼, €, etc) using the standard QWERTY computer keyboard.

Without using a virtual keyboard, the standard physical keyboard supports for inserting alternate characters and symbols using the Compose key in Linux. Here’s how to enable and use the key in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10 & higher with default GNOME desktop.

Enable Compose key in GNOME:

1. Firstly, search for and install “Gnome Tweaks” configuration tool via Ubuntu Software.

For those familiar with Linux commands may also press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command to install the tool:

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

2. Secondly, open ‘Activities’ overview screen, search for and open ‘GNOME Tweaks’:

3. When the configuration tool opens, do:

• Go to “Keyboard & Mouse” in the left pane.
• Click on ‘Disable‘ area in the right side after the Compose Key setting.
• Turn on the toggle in pop-up dialog.
• Finally choose a key to use as compose key.

Type unusual characters via Compose Key:

After enabled the functions, you may now press Compose key, then start typing the keys below one by one to insert a character. For example, type Compose key then ~ finally u will input ũ. No need to hold the compose key, though you have to hit the key combination in a short time period in Ubuntu 21.10. For Ubuntu 20.04, it even works 1 min after the compose key is pressed.

Common Compose Key combinations via Wikipedia. In first column, you may replace a with most uppercase and lowercase vowels:

Ubuntu by default displays only date and time in the center of top-bar. Users have to click on it to see which day is today in drop-down calendar.

To make life easier, you may configure the GNOME desktop to show the day of week in top-bar. And, here’s how to do the trick in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04.

Option 1: Single command to Display Weekday in Top bar:

For those who are familiar with Linux commands, it can be done by running a single gsettings command.

To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window. When it opens, paste the command below and hit run:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-weekday true

After that, it shows the weekday name in short (e.g., Sat and Sun) immediately.

Option 2: Use System Settings (for Ubuntu 24.04)

For Ubuntu 24.04 with GNOME 46, system settings (aka Gnome Control Center) has include a toggle option to show/hide the weekday in top-bar.

First, press Super (Windows logo key) + S to open system status menu (Quick Settings), then click launch “Settings”. When it opens, navigate to System in left, then go to Date & Time, finally turn on the option for “Week Day” to enable this feature.

Option 3: Toggle Weekday Display via Gnome Tweaks

For Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, the must have GNOME configuration tool ‘Gnome Tweaks’ provides the toggle option for those hate Linux commands. If you don’t have it, search for and install via Ubuntu Software:

Next, press Super/Windows key to bring up activities overview screen. Then search for and launch Gnome Tweaks. Navigate to “Top Bar” from left pane, and then you’ll see the option to toggle “Weekday”.

Option 4: Use Dconf Editor

As you may know, the advanced configuration tool “Dconf Editor” also provides a graphical option to toggle this function.

First, search for and install ‘Dconf Editor’ from either Ubuntu Software or App Center.

Then, launch the tool and navigate to “org/gnome/desktop/interface“. Finally, find out and turn on the option for “clock-show-weekday”:

As you see, the tool also provides tons of other configure options. Use them as you want and enjoy!

The Ubuntu Software app in Ubuntu 21.10 Impish has an ugly font rendering on default Wayland. The text in the app looks a bit pixelated.

I found the issue firstly when Impish was in beta stage. The issue was reported to also affect LibreOffice, Chromium, and other Snap apps, though most of them has been updated with it fixed.

Ubuntu Software with Bad Font

According to Daniel van Vugt, this issue is caused by a few key settings change. The following keys has been removed in Ubuntu 21.10:

org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings antialiasing
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings hinting
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings rgba-order

And, following ones take the places instead:

org.gnome.desktop.interface font-antialiasing
org.gnome.desktop.interface font-hinting
org.gnome.desktop.interface font-rgba-order

Not only Snap apps, but also font-manager and Gnome Tweaks are affected by this change. And, Ubuntu Software (aka “Snap Store”) has fixed the issue in via the current beta release.

Snap Store Beta

Upgrade Snap Store via Beta Channel:

So the solution is either wait until Canonical published the update, or update Snap Store (Ubuntu Software) through beta channel if you use it regularly.

To do so, simply press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, and then run command:

snap refresh --channel beta snap-store

After that, font will be properly loaded next boot.

If you’ve found that Snap Store in stable channel has been updated to version higher than “3.38.0-66”. You may revert back by running command:

snap refresh --channel stable snap-store

That’s it. Enjoy!

This simple tutorial shows how to remove the trash icon from the dock in Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat.

Different to the previous releases, Ubuntu 24.04 puts the trash icon on left dock instead of the desktop. However, I don’t use the trash icon in either location. Instead, I removes files using right-click menu options, and go to trash via file manager left sidebar.

If you also find it useless, then here’s how to remove it either via a single command or by a graphical configuration tool.

Continue Reading…

After installed the new Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04, one of the top things to do is tweaking the left dock panel.

Via “System Settings -> Appearance”, you may change the panel position to bottom, adjust icon size, and enable auto-hide. However, the 9 dots ‘Show Applications’ (or ‘Show Apps’) icon sticks to the bottom which is not movable.

Move ‘Show Applications’ button to the Top:

Though you can not drag moving the icon, Ubuntu has hidden option to change the position. And you may run single command in terminal to do the trick.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, paste the command below and hit Enter:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-apps-at-top true

The icon goes to top (or left if you moved dock to bottom) immediately after running the command. So it will look like:

Shorten the Dock Panel:

The dock launcher is easy to move to the bottom, but Appearance setting does not has option to make it compact, so to have Mac OS style short bottom panel.

To shorten Ubuntu Dock, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run command:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock extend-height false

After that, it will look like:

Configure Ubuntu Dock via Dconf Editor:

For those hate Linux commands, there’s an advanced configuration tool ‘Dconf Editor’ available to do the trick.

Search for and install the tool from Ubuntu Software if you don’t have it.

Next, open Dconf Editor by searching from activities overview screen. Then navigate to “org/gnome/shell/extensions/dash-to-dock“. There you’ll see a list of options to configure the dock panel, including moving ‘Show Applications’, ‘extend-height’, ‘click to minimize’, and more.

That’s all. Enjoy!

For laptop and desktop PC with more than one audio input and output devices, it’s possible to switch between audio devices quickly with upper right corner system tray menu.

It’s a common situation that users have more than one audio devices connected to the computer. GNOME, the default Ubuntu Desktop Environment, provides Sound settings to choose which input and/or output device to use.

To make life easier, a Gnome extension is available to integrate the settings into system tray status menu under volume control slider. So users can quickly choose a speaker, HMDI, microphone or other input device via few clicks.

The extension offers a setting dialog allows to select which device, e.g., HDMI , Speakers, microphone etc, you would like to display or hide in menu. It’s possible to hide the menu when there’s only one choice, or manually toggle visible of either menu, as well as audio profiles.

Install the audio device chooser extension:

The extension supports up to GNOME 40, it works on Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, and next Ubuntu 21.10. As well, all recent GNOME based Linux distros, e.g., Debian 11, Fedora 34, CentOS 8, and Manjaro are supported.

1.) Firstly, open terminal by either searching from activities overview or pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard.

2.) When terminal opens, run command to install the chrome-gnome-shell package which allows to install Gnome extensions using your web browser. Also install gnome-shell-extension-prefs (Gnome Extensions app) package, the tool to manage all installed extensions.

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell gnome-shell-extension-prefs

3.) Finally, go to the link button below and turn on the slider icon to install the extension.

Don’t worry if you don’t see the toggle icon, install the browser extension via ‘Click here to install the browser extension’ link and refresh the web page will make it visible.

After installation, search for and open “Gnome Extensions” from the overview screen. Then click on the gear button for this extension to configure the audio device chooser menu.

That’s all. Enjoy!