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Rasmus
Asked: 2012-03-29 09:31:16 +0800 CST

Is there a way to get a workspace grid in Gnome 3.x, Gnome 40, Gnome 41, Gnome 42?

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Is there any setting/plugin/hack/workaround that will allow me to run Ubuntu with the Gnome 3.x/Gnome Shell desktop while retaining a rectangular 2x2 or n x m workspace grid instead of the default Gnome one-dimensional line-up of workspaces?

gnome workspaces gnome-shell gnome-shell-extension workspace-switcher

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Recommended extensions for 3.32+ and 40, 41, 42: Workspace Matrix.

    Workspace Grid is currently not being updated, but the developer instead recommends Workspace Matrix. Workspace Matrix has nice previews of the workspaces in the displayed switcher and a lot of tweakable options.

    It holds the same benefits over Frippery Panel as Workspace Grid did (see below), but is als very actively maintained.

    For 3.20: The extension Workspace Grid does the job. It is works flawlessly with 3.20.

    Two benefits over Frippery Bottom Panel (which work well, cf. this answer) are:

    1. No hacking required to remove the bottom panel.

    2. In the overview, the grid structure is shown as the chosen two-dimensional grid. With Frippery Bottom Panel, The overview continues to shows a single strip of workspaces.

    Workplace Grid. The width of the workspace overview is adjustable. Workplace Grid extension

    Frippery Bottom Panel. Though a workplace grid is achieved, it is not shown in the overview. Frippery Bottom Panel extension

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  2. Pre-GNOME-Shell 3.10: With a combination of two extensions, it is possible. The downside is that you will have a bottom bar.

    My blog post explains various ways on how to do this, including getting rid of the bottom bar (included below).

    For 3.10 - 3.20: Go to extensions.gnome.org and find Frippery Bottom Panel. Install it. This will give you a bottom bar. Clicking on the right side will give you an option to disable dynamic workspaces and allows you to set number of rows and columns.

    The cleanest way of getting rid of the bottom bar is by editing

     ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/stylesheet.css

    and on line 6, change the height to -3pt. Save the file. To activate the effect, GNOME-Shell must be restarted, so reboot, log out and in or restart GNOME-Shell by pressing Alt+f2, enter the command r and press ENTER.

    Credit goes to Brian McSweeney.

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  3. I was actually looking at this today, and the short answer is no. A hacky workaround is to have a gnome-panel running, with the workspace-switcher applet on it. This applet provides a setting for number of rows of workspaces, so you can create a grid layout.

    I used to have a hack that was a daemon running in the background, which would handle this for me, so I wouldn't need the workspace switcher applet. It doesn't work any more though. However, I'll be rewriting it soon, so that it works again with GNOME 3.x, and using dconf/gsettings. It will only be configurable from editing the settings directly using the gsettings command line tool, or dconf-editor, though.

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  4. I'm using GNOME Shell version 42, extension version 34 and I just upgraded by ubuntu release from 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS.

    If anyone is using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and cannot get grid workspaces to work with firefox (snap, or no snap), then refer to this other answer to a similar question.

    Essentially it involves installing the "Extension manager" as such:

    sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager

    Which then enables workspace grids in a similar fashion to the gnome shell extension tool for firefox.

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  5. You can get a 1X1 workspace grid using the new WorkspaceBar extension I wrote. I will look into adding a 2X2 option if people want it. It would be small little buttons to fit on the panel.

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