Go easy on gnome extentions they sometimes slow down performance and do weird visual bugs

For some reason mpv looks like this when maximised and it’s great. Doesn’t distract from the movie and you can still see the time and such. Of course the top bar disappears if you go fullscreen.

Things are looking a lot more normal now. I will keep experimenting further.

I use Gnome and have for awhile. It is best used very differently from a windows style DE. If you want to see everything that is open take three fingers and swipe up on the track pad. Glance at activities, and then swipe down again to return to what you were doing. or click on something to switch tasks. I mainly use the bar at the bottom to launch applications I use a lot. It’s not something I use to switch tasks.

For organization I’d reccomend using multiple desktops. You can swipe three fingers right to get to a fresh one and open things there then swipe back and forth between them easily. It’s a very different experience to something like KDE and isn’t for everyone.

As for extensions I’d reccomend getting: Blur My Shell AppINdicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support AlwaysShowTitlesInOverview Coverflow AltTab JustPerfection Lock screen Background Weather O’Clock

These give you a lot of customizaton options and make it look nicer imo.

If you are not a fan of the big gesture focus (it really is more like a mobile OS) then you might think about simply switching to a different DE. It’s easy to install one and you can log out and switch over without reinstalling your distro. KDE is much more of a traditional desktop OS and similar to Windows. I personally love the way Gnome is but I get it isn’t for everyone.

swipe up with 3 fingers on the touchpad

I had to enhance my experience with extensions. And I usually delay updates because the extensions I use haven’t even been updated yet.

There are times I take matter into my own hands and fork some of the extensions I use.

But developing and debugging extensions suck because GJS and LookingGlass (DevTool analogue) can’t even keep resources from being nullified between prompts. My guess is that since GJS was programmed in C, they can’t afford to do proper Garbage Collection.

So my advice? Just pick something else.

There are for sure extensions for your need, just look trough the shitty extentions webpage.