1) Removing icons from the System status area
Gnome 3 has a fixed number (well, kinda fixed, because Shell Extensions can be used to create more) of icons in the System Status Area. Some of these icons, like accessibility, may not be useful to you and just taking up space.
You can remove the icons that appear in the System Status Area by editing the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js, and commenting out some of the items that are assigned to the STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_ORDER array.
const STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_ORDER = [/*'a11y',*/ 'display', 'keyboard', 'volume', 'bluetooth', 'network', 'battery'];
const STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_SHELL_IMPLEMENTATION = {
// 'a11y': imports.ui.status.accessibility.ATIndicator,
This is at circa line 36
Be aware that updates to this file will most likely undo any changes you make, so if the icon pops back, just edit the file again.
To make your change "live", press ATL-F2 and type r then press enter. This will cause the GnomeShell to restart. This usually doesn't close any running apps, but save any work you have just to be safe.
2) Installing Gnome Shell Extensions
- mkdir ~/temp
- cd ~/temp
- git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
- cd gnome-shell-extensions
- git checkout 3.0.0
- ./autogen.sh
- make && make install
- press ALT-F2 and run the command "r" (without the quotes) to restart the Gnome Shell
Step 5 checks out the version of the extensions that works with the current version of the Gnome Shell. You can omit this command to get the latest version of the extensions, but their manifest.json files do mandate a more recent version of the Gnome Shell (like 3.0.1 or 3.0.2).
You can add the --enable-extensions="alternate-tab windowsNavigator auto-move-windows dock user-theme alternative-status-menu gajim" option to step 6 to install the additional extenions. Your luck may vary - my version of Gnome 3 would not load with all the extenions.
For a complete list of the extenions that can be supplied to the --enable-extensions option, see the configure.ac file under the ALL_EXTENSIONS= section.
To check for any errors that may have occured while loading the extenions, press ALT-F2 and run "lg" (without the quotes). This will open a JavaScript console, which has an Errors tab.
3) Manually Tweaking
A powerful gconf style editor is available called dconf-editor. To access this, press ALT-F2 and type dconf-editor. Be careful what you tweak, you could prevent the gnome-shell from starting.
