Gnome Shell Design Dreams

The Gnome Shell user interface has mostly seen minor refinements and quality of life updates in recent cycles, but on the design side we’ve explored a lot of longer-term things we’d like to do. Some of these we have relatively complete plans for, others are more vague ideas that need more research and prototyping. As always, getting things like these implemented depends on developer capacity and interest (and sometimes funding). I like the ideas. None of them represents a major break from the current interface; several bring Gnome in line with the experience that’s expected and common in other desktop environments and operating systems. The most advanced one, which should appear in the next version (Gnome 51), is the overlay showing search results (image), instead of these appearing on their own dedicated/full screen. The change is justified in light of the philosophy adopted in Gnome 40: “When you navigate GNOME Shell, interface elements always come from somewhere, and exit to…