GNOME 3.32 is awesome, but still needs improvements in key areas

GNOME 3.32 is the latest release of the most popular Linux Desktop Environment (Interface+Apps) that is used by Ubuntu, Fedora and many other Linux distributions as their default experience (with or without changes). GNOME 3.32 packs itself with new niceties such as a refreshed theme and icon set, many much-needed performance fixes, updated apps, etc.

GNOME 3.32 on Ubuntu 19.04, customized to be close to vanilla GNOME interface.

However, GNOME continues to have key areas that stick out like a sore thumb in terms of intuitiveness or convenience. I have laid them down below with links to bug reports, please treat my feedback as constructive criticism of a project that I respect, but find confusing.

We go in two parts, the GNOME Interface first, then the Apps. This is going to be a comprehensive read, so buckle up!

1. A Desktop that does nothing

A vanilla GNOME Desktop boots to a wallpaper and a minimal status bar at the top. And nothing else.

A vanilla GNOME Desktop has a wallpaper and a status bar. No dock/taskbar or desktop icons.

To launch an app, I need to point the cursor to the top left edge of the screen and then a Dock appears (they call it Dash) with pinned applications. I don’t understand why the Dash is hidden by default on the Desktop when there’s nothing in its way. What is my computer doing starring at a wallpaper? I start my computer, I should be able to launch often-used apps in one click, with no unnecessary cursor movements.

The keyboard alternate is to hit “Windows/Super” key and search for an app to launch, which is fine only for infrequently used applications. It cannot be treated as a replacement of a cursor-based functionality. There are no default keyboard shortcuts for launching apps pinned to the Dash either. Windows, Linux Mint and KDE all have this, as did Unity, and is very convenient.

Keyboard bindings in Ubuntu 18.04+, a feature also present in Windows, KDE, Unity, etc. that GNOME can benefit from adding.

There’s no doubt why the extension Dash to Dock is so popular, which does exactly what it sounds like. It makes the Dash visible by default. Ubuntu does a sane thing by bundling a customized Dash to Dock by default. Solus and Manjaro bundle the extension too.

GNOME should reconsider what they want the default Desktop to do on boot. I think they can make it more useful without sacrificing their design philosophy. If you agree that the Dash being visible by default can make GNOME more useful, chime in on the bug report I’ve filed.

2. Barely functional status bar

Clicking on an indicator icon (say Wi-Fi) on GNOME’s status bar doesn’t open its relevant menu. Instead, no matter which icon is clicked, there is a standard menu that pops up.

GNOME status bar menu.

Any individual indicator settings (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.) are hidden inside sub-menus! One good thing is that the Wi-Fi sub-menu lets me access Wi-Fi settings. But it’s inconsistent that sound settings can’t be accessed from the status bar menu.

a. Connecting to a Wi-Fi network is too many steps

Connecting to a Wi-Fi network in GNOME involves the following.

Click the status bar icons > Click the Wi-Fi sub-menu > Click "Select Network" > Select the network to connect to > Type password and hit Enter

Whereas on every other operating system I’ve used, the process involves two less steps.

Click the Wi-Fi icon directly, which shows a list of networks > Select the network to connect to > Type password and hit Enter

I don’t understand why so many clicks are required to connect to a Wi-Fi network. I’ve filed a bug report .

b. No battery percentage option

GNOME doesn’t show battery percentage by default and that is fine. For occasional needs, one can click on the status bar icons to check the battery percentage. But for those who need to see it regularly, neither the status bar menu nor GNOME Settings have an option to enable showing battery percentage on the status bar. The battery indicator icon doesn’t accurately reflect the battery level as it’s too coarse. It can actually mislead you into thinking that the battery level is 40% when it’s actually 20.

Upon searching the web, it turns out a separate app called “GNOME Tweaks” needs to be installed to enable showing battery percentage in the status bar.

GNOME requires a separate app to be installed to show battery percentage on the status bar.

For most people who need this toggle, they will never know about the existence of the Tweaks app (more on this later). This is the kind of setting that needs to be baked in. Not having battery percentage shown by default is perfectly fine but having no discoverable way to toggle it despite it being an available feature is rather mute.

GNOME is currently working on having the battery icon display finer levels , which is a start. But the thing to understand is that the purpose of doing that ultimately leads to the need to see battery percentage. If you think GNOME should bake in an option like macOS, Windows and every other Linux Desktop to show battery percentage on the status bar, weigh in on the bug report or file a new one .

c. No app indicators

Classic app indicator icons are used extensively throughout Windows, macOS and various Linux Desktop Environments. And for good reasons. They convey information which you may want to notice but don’t require your full attention. GNOME doesn’t support app indicators, putting forth for a long time that a better implementation of app indicators exists and that other features of the system (like notifications) can replace functionality of classic app indicators. Problem is they don’t.

Take, for example, a syncing service like Dropbox or Google Drive. When uploading/downloading multiple files, especially smaller ones, I don’t want to be receiving a sea of notifications for every single file sync. I can check the sync progress by clicking on the indicator without having to open the file manager.

Another example would be torrents. When closing a torrent app like Transmission, it continues running in the background and has an option to avoid the system from suspending if desired. Even when the app window is closed, its indicator icon allows for quick actions like “Pause/Start” torrents.

Transmission torrent app indicator has useful quick actions.

On the other hand, a GNOME styled torrent app “Fragments” stops downloading in the background without even notifying the user. One needs to keep the app window open to ensure that the torrents are being downloaded. Not sure how this is an improvement.

A messaging service like Telegram is another example. I may not want to keep chat notifications on since they can quickly get disturbing, or for privacy reasons. But I may still want to know that I’ve gotten a message. This is exactly why Telegram provides a badge in its indicator icon. Starting to sense why they are called indicators , eh?

Telegram app indicator shows badges for new messages.

Vanilla GNOME doesn’t support app indicators, doesn’t have a permanently visible dock and doesn’t support badges on app icons. All of this combined make it very difficult to know that I’ve gotten a Telegram message or if a cloud sync service is running in background without having to open the apps, and not be constantly checking the notification area.

Even if a better implementation may exist, it needs to be understood and accepted that cross-platform apps are unlikely to create indicators specific to the Linux Desktop, a marketshare of less than 5%. This is precisely why KDE continues to support the standard spec. Ubuntu and several other distributions that ship GNOME do a good job by enabling app indicator support ( via an extension ) by default.

At this point, it’s probably too late for GNOME to reconsider the decision, but a feature parity gap is a gap. Numerous bug reports asking for app indicator support haven’t proven positive, but it maybe worth to initiate a discussion on the GNOME Community .

d. No suspend button

The first time I was trying to suspend my laptop on GNOME, I popped open the status bar menu where I thought the suspend button would be. After all, buttons to shut down, lock and log out reside there. But the suspend button was nowhere to be found!

A bit of web searching and I found that GNOME indeed does have a suspend button in the very same menu. It’s hidden behind the “Power” button. You need to long press on the Power button or press and hold the “Alt” key for the Suspend button to appear!

• GNOME Power button
• GNOME Suspend button

Need I break down how ridiculous and non-intuitive this is? No one ever is going to find out that the Suspend button resides hidden behind the Power button. The fact that an extension exists that merely puts the Suspend button in the status menu is rather obnoxious. GNOME considered adding this basic feature but there doesn’t seem to be any progress since long.

3. Deceiving app drawer

Getting to the app drawer itself is a 2-step process on vanilla GNOME. Point the cursor to the top left edge of the screen, then in the Dash/Dock that appears, click the app grid button to see all apps installed on the system. Opening the app drawer should be but a one-step process, like in Windows, macOS, elementary OS, KDE and pretty much everywhere else. The above mentioned solution to make the Dash visible by default solves this problem as well.

GNOME app drawer.

Expecting people to just know the keyboard shortcut “Super+A” that opens the app drawer is not ideal. Of course, pressing “Windows/Super” key and searching for apps works but that’s not the same use case as seeing what apps are installed on the system. Speaking of search..

The GNOME app drawer has another issue. Application names are cut-off at a short length which makes it difficult to differentiate between apps with similar names, a problem that persists even in Search. It also affects the “Alt+Tab” applications switcher.

App names get cut-off in the GNOME app drawer, search and applications switcher.

The thought that on large screens, especially Desktop monitors, I can’t read full app names is an annoying one. The fix for truncated app names is still in progress since a year .

Interestingly, the GNOME app drawer has folders for organizing applications, like iOS and Android. But to my surprise, they act nothing like the iOS and Android counterparts. You can’t drag and drop applications to create folders, take them out of existing ones or move between folders.

GNOME doesn’t support drag and drop app management, even though it gives that impression.

Again, web searching tells me that GNOME’s Software Center is to be used to manage folders in the app drawer. That is supposed to be intuitive?

For what it’s worth, an extension exists for this as well. It seems though that allowing drag and drop app management is in the design phase . Would be great to have it in the next GNOME release.

4. Unnecessary notifications

Say I click on the “Open download folder” button in Firefox for a file I just downloaded. GNOME displays a notification saying “Application is ready” but doesn’t open the said app automatically. Same for other similar cases where I’m opening an app from another.

Now, if I clicked on the open folder button, it’s pretty clear what I want to do. I’m totally expecting another app to open because I actively initiated it, so there’s no point giving me a notification about it and sitting idle. No cause for this issue has yet been identified as per the discussion on its bug report . The fact that an extension exists to fix even this behavior is getting tiresome at this point.

Now on to GNOME apps.

5. Barebones file manager

a. Can’t create new document from the context menu

GNOME’s file manager can’t create new files (e.g. A new text/office document) from the right-click context menu! Instead the solution is to open the desired app, create a new file there and save it to the desired location, which BTW where I already was in the file manager to begin with. I’ve filed a bug report , weigh in with your thoughts. Turns out, GNOME does have this feature. One needs to create a template and place it in the “Templates” folder for the feature to work. Not intuitive at all, can’t expect novice users to know this, and then go about doing it.

b. Confusing action buttons

The buttons in the file manager have monochrome icons and don’t show any labels/tooltips on hover. This makes it difficult to identify what some buttons do, especially when similar ones are placed together. In the image below, can you identify the action invoked by each icon?

Confusing action button icons in GNOME’s file manager with no labels/tooltips to help either. Guess what each one does.

The first one opens a new window, second opens a new tab and the third creates a new folder. So intuitive! Also, why are these frequently used functions hidden inside a menu? Opening a new tab is not a setting! Bug report here .

c. Same icons for different file types

Speaking of confusing icons, GNOME’s new icon set doesn’t distinguish between different file types.

• GNOME has same icons for .deb and .zip files
• GNOME has same icons for .md and .iso files
• GNOME has same icons for .pdf and .docx files
• GNOME has same icons for .txt and .vcf files

I’ve filed bug reports from them here: 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 .

d. Oh, the file picker!

GNOME’s file picker, used to select files when in other applications, doesn’t have a thumbnail grid view. This means having to navigate one file after another to see palpable previews of each before selecting any of them. Windows, macOS and KDE provide a thumbnail grid view, why doesn’t GNOME?

• GNOME file picker, with too tiny thumbnails.
• Windows file picker, with properly sized thumbnails and a grid view.

This has been an ignored feature request since 2004 (!) , to the point that it has become an internet meme . File picker is a fundamental and frequently used feature in any OS, it’s time the majority of Linux users are on parity with the rest of the world.

e. Non-discoverable way to bookmark folders

The context-menu in GNOME’s file manager can’t be used to bookmark folders, a feature that pins them to the sidebar. One needs to click on the folder name in the location bar at the top for the option to present itself.

• No bookmark option in folder context menu
• No bookmark option when inside the folder either
• Bookmark option only in location bar popup

It is not quite obvious the action exists in the location bar and why should I be expecting it there. I’ve filed a bug report explaining the same.

6. Document viewer (PDF reader) with no tabs!

Coming from Windows to Ubuntu five years ago, seeing that the file manager (GNOME’s) had multiple tabs like a browser blew me away. Then I noted that other GNOME apps have multiple tabs too, like the Terminal and Text editor apps. It was onto something powerful. Surprisingly though, the PDF/Document viewer doesn’t support tabs! Every new document opens in a new window, making it harder to navigate between them, while also cluttering the windows overview mode.

Several bug reports have been filed over the years repeatedly requesting multiple tabs. It gets shot down every time, citing a 10 year old decision mentioning “stability and security” as the reason. Every other major document viewer has multiple tabs: Adobe, Foxit, Okular, etc. There’s no reason to believe GNOME’s arguments against tabs in just this one app are valid anymore. It’s 2019.

7. Two photo viewing apps

It is somewhat odd that GNOME has separate apps for an image viewer (Eye of GNOME) and for photo management (GNOME Photos). GNOME Photos has a perfectly functional image viewer built in. And so It seems to me that GNOME Photos can take over the role of image viewing and related functions from Eye of GNOME and the latter can be discarded.

Eye of GNOME image viewer (left) and GNOME Photo built-in viewer (right).

elementary OS does this by making the Photo management handle image viewing as well, which also makes basic image manipulation options (crop, rotate, filters, etc.) available in the image viewer for quick access. There is a 3 year old bug report requesting GNOME Photos to handle image viewing .

8. Can’t find my settings

a. Undiscoverable settings

The GNOME Settings app is also, well, minimal. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except when too much simplicity makes it harder to find a setting. For instance, the option to turn on Wi-Fi Hotspot is hidden under the three-dot menu where it’s unlikely to be expected or noticed.

Connecting to Wi-Fi Hotspot is tugged under the three-dot menu.

Many of my friends who use Ubuntu actually thought the feature doesn’t exist! The option to manage previously connected Wi-Fi networks is hidden in the menu as well. There is ample room for the options to be shown in the main settings area. I’ve filed a bug report .

b. Can’t set a custom wallpaper

Trying to set a picture of your choice as a wallpaper via “Settings > Background” didn’t work. GNOME only shows images within the “Pictures” folder in the file manager. In fact, it only shows images directly in the “Pictures” folder, not if they are in subfolders within it!

GNOME wallpaper picker doesn’t detect any pictures in subfolders in the “Pictures” folder.

Moreover, it won’t let me select a picture using a file picker. Now I know that I can use the right-click context menu in the file manager to set a custom wallpaper, but that won’t work for setting a Lock Screen picture. Plus, features are supposed to be exposed where they are expected to be used. Bug report here.

Turns out, the previously mentioned Tweaks app can do just that, set a wallpaper and lock screen background from anywhere using a file picker. A basic feature like this should be baked right into Settings. I don’t understand why one needs to have a separate “Extra settings” app for these things. Speaking of which..

c. Tweaks app that shouldn’t exist

When using GNOME, the Tweaks app turns out to be a boon. Many of the needed settings are in there which the main Settings app doesn’t carry, such as follows.

• Ability to turn off animations (useful for accessibility, or just because animations in GNOME can be jarring since it isn’t quite a smooth performer anyway).
• Option to suspend when laptop lid is closed! (something that should be in GNOME Power settings where I couldn’t find it and therefore gave the impression it didn’t exist!)
• Ability to set any picture as Desktop and Lock Screen backgrounds
• Show battery percentage, etc.

GNOME Tweaks app, a boon that should really be part of main Settings.

It seems to me that a separate Tweaks app shouldn’t exist really. All important settings should be baked right into the main Settings app for discoverability. Most distros, including Ubuntu and Fedora (specifically, I checked Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 19.04 and Fedora 30) , don’t ship with Tweaks app by default. This makes discovering that one important setting harder. It leads people to believe that features like “turning off animations”, “battery percentage”, etc. don’t exist on GNOME when they actually do! Even if distros did ship the Tweaks app by default, the user is left confused as to which app contains which setting.

In the past few releases, quite a few options have moved from Tweaks to the main Settings app . How much longer till GNOME realizes at least some of the options in the Tweaks app are universally relevant and that they belong in Settings? I’ve filed a bug report suggesting that the Tweaks app not exist!

9. Software Center

GNOME’s Software Center is great. There is one pet peeve of mine with it though. App pages on Software Center do not display changelogs, even for GNOME apps. It’s something that elementary OS does quite well, like this elementary 3rd party app for example.

Conclusion

Several paper cuts in GNOME lead to an ultimately unpleasant experience for end users, new and experienced alike. On their own, these issues may seem minor, but together they can lead to confusion and even annoyance. The sheer number of extensions that exist to cater to non-advanced use cases and their popularity are a clear sign of shortcomings in vanilla GNOME.

I felt it was prudent to point out areas of improvement especially considering that most popular Linux distributions ship with GNOME as their default experience (with or without changes). Ubuntu, Fedora et al., are first Linux Desktop experiences to many millions and it should be the best it can be.

You may disagree with many of the issues pointed out above, or may have different solutions. But the common thing is we all want GNOME to be better. I urge you to initiate discussions on the GNOME Community and file bug reports . The stage is yours.