 I think it's pretty well established that if you want to use the GNOME desktop environment in order to make it really good, you have to add some extensions. And the reason why I say that is because the vanilla experience is fairly limited on the amount of customization that you can do out of the box. In order to actually make anything different for the most part you actually have to make certain tweaks. You have to install GNOME tweak tools. You have to install the GNOME extension manager and so on and so forth. So what I thought I'd do today is talk about five GNOME extensions that are absolutely essential for new GNOME users. Let's go ahead and jump in. So we have here a vanilla version of GNOME running on Fedora 35. The system has been completely updated and the only thing that I've changed here is I've installed the GNOME extension manager. And I've done that because it's simply easier to install extensions from here than having to install the browser extension and then install them from the browser. So the first extension on the list is called dash to dock. So if we search for dash to dock here, it should come up right here and you hit install. And we'll show you exactly what this does. What it does, as you can see along the bottom is instead of having the bar along the bottom only when you're in the activities mode, you actually get to see it all the time. Now there's a similar extension called dash to panel. And what dash to panel would do is instead of having a dock like Mac OS, it would allow you to have a panel along the bottom similar to what you'd have with Windows. So that is dash to dock. And it's really great. There's a lot of customization that comes along with it. So if you right click on here and click dash to dock settings, dash to dock settings will come up. You can change where the the dock appears. You can choose the size and the appearance of it along with the launchers and whether or not the trash can shows up and so on and so forth. It vastly increased the amount of customization you can do for the dock in vanilla GNOME because there's actually not any customization you can do out of the box in vanilla GNOME. You have to have something like this or going to weeks or something like that in order to make any changes at all. So that is dash to dock. So the next one on the list is called ARC menu. Now ARC menu, if we search for this will allow you to have an applications menu that will pop up in certain situations. So if we go ahead and install this installed extension, we'll get a menu up here that gives us a menu system that is similar to what you'd expect on like XFCE or budget or something like that. And what's great about this is that if you don't want to have to deal with the application fly out animation and all that stuff that you'd have to normally put up in within vanilla GNOME, you can actually just use a regular menu like you would in like Windows or KDE or something like that. And if you use something like dash to panel, this button will actually appear along the bottom in the panel itself instead of up in the activities bar. So that is ARC menu. Now, there are a couple of different ones. You'll want to make sure that you choose the one that has no spaces here. I'm not exactly sure what this is, but you can see from GNOME extensions manager that the one here is not actually maintained. This is the one that you want. Okay. So the next one on the list is absolutely essential. And I don't actually know why this isn't included by default in like every desktop environment because frankly, it's just something that is needed. Now some desktop environments actually do this. They don't actually need, you know, extra stuff, but GNOME for sure needs this. This is called caffeine. So if you search for caffeine, you have to actually learn how to spell. And then you install this. It actually does nothing out of the box in terms of something that you can see. But what it will do is will prevent your screen from going dark or turning into the lock screen while you're watching videos. And the fact that the desktop environment doesn't do that by default is kind of annoying, but it is what it is. And by having this installed, it means that when you're recording something or you're watching a movie or you're watching YouTube or whatever, your screen just won't go dark randomly. If you haven't touched the mouse in a while. So it's not something that is all that flashy, but it's something that adds in functionality that probably should be that right default. Okay. So the next extension on the list is called desktop icons and G. And what this does is it brings back functionality that used to exist in GNOME but was pulled out. Basically what it does is it puts allows you to put icons on the desktop. Now, frankly, this is not something that I miss. Like I don't ever put icons on my desktop, even when I'm using a floating window manager or desktop environment. I'm not one of those people who wants to put all of my stuff on the desktop, but there are those people. So this extension reenables that functionality. So it's called desktop icons and G and you install this and install and allows you to have icons on the desktop. That's literally all it does. The last one on the list is called clipboard indicator. So if we search for this and install it, what this does is it puts a little icon up here at the top that will show you your clipboard history. Now one of the things that I always install when I'm in a tiling window manager is clip menu D. And what that does is it keeps a running history of everything that you've copied over the course of your, your current session. And while it's not necessarily essential to everyone, I think that you would be surprised at how often it comes in handy if you've copied something 10 minutes ago, but you've copied things since then, but you still need that thing you copied 10 minutes ago. You can go back in your clip menus history and find that thing that you copied. Now I will warn you this does keep track of passwords. So if you use a password manager, make sure that you use private mode in order to get past the thing of this actually saving your passwords when you probably shouldn't. And especially if you're a streamer or a YouTuber or something like that, make sure you never show your clipboard on camera. I've done that before. It's not a great thing. Just don't do it. It's something that you want to keep in mind if you are in that situation. So those are the top five genome extensions that I think everyone should install. There are several more that are actually really good. One of the things that I highly recommend you do is install genome extensions manager and go through some of the extensions that are ranked in the highest popularity because there are a lot of really good ones there to add really cool functionality to genome and can make genome even better than it already is. So if you have extensions that you think are essential, you can leave those in the comment section below. You can follow me on Twitter at TheLinuxCast. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com. SliceLinuxCast, before I go, I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons. 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