GNOME Shell Extension - Blur my Shell

A GNOME Shell extension that adds a blur look to different parts of the GNOME Shell, including the top panel, dash and overview.

Functionalities:

• blur dash with opacity prefs
• blur panel
• blur overview
• blur appfolders
• change lockscreen blur settings
• change appgrid’s folders background
• choose between static blur (generated once) and dynamic blur (generated each frame)
• change performances settings

This extension is guaranteed to be compatible with the following extensions:

• Dash to Dock (from dash blur switch)
• Dash to Panel (from panel blur switch)
• Window List (from dedicated switch)
• Hide Top Bar (from dedicated option)

Known bugs

Note

This extension can be buggy, as the gnome-shell’s blur implementation is quite flawed in some ways.

To entirely remove artifacts from the top panel, you can use static blur with the appropriate switch, use static blur.

Moreover, if you don’t use static blur, selecting no artifacts in the settings allows the blur to regenerate itself a lot better, at the expense of CPU time (but cannot currently tell the difference, less than 0.5% CPU on my middle-range i5)

Selecting another profile might be enough (especially if you have disabled animations and/or windows borders), feel free to test!

List of bugs

• artifacts on blurred parts gnome shell bug
• some apps may become transparent, a weird issue…
• cannot create rounded blur (so no rounded dash-to-dock, or panel corners, …)
• overview blur is transparent on second monitor when using Wayland, sometimes :(
• etc (see in issues)

If you find other bugs, please report them!

Advanced

Install from source

To install the latest version (though maybe unstable), use the makefile:

git clone https://github.com/aunetx/blur-my-shell
cd blur-my-shell
make install

And restart GNOME Shell if needed.

Force overview blur update

In case you have problems with your dynamic timed wallpaper not being updated due to using third-party process to change the wallpaper, you can force the overview blur to be updated with the command:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-opacity 99 && gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-opacity 100

Versions support

The current extension supports these GNOME Shell versions:

• 40 – master branch

Older GNOME Shell versions are supported up to Blur my Shell version 6, and by versions 17, 19 and 22:

• 3.38 – pre_40 branch
• 3.36 – pre_40 branch

Special thanks

Special thanks to @swyknox for the awesome icon!

Many thanks to @CorvetteCole for his awesome contributions, and the upcoming applications blur :p

And an enormous thank you to every contributors, issue openers or simple users – this is a fun project to manage :)

License

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.