OmniPanel for GNOME Shell

OmniPanel is a true multi-monitor panel extension and advanced window management system for GNOME Shell (versions 46, 47, and 50) OmniPanel is a powerful Window Management and Tiling engine featuring a visual Zone Designer, smart auto-placement, directional snapping, and pure automatic tiling algorithms.

demo.mp4

OmniPanel also introduces a revolutionary Active Toolbar Movement engine. Instead of cloning, OmniPanel dynamically sweeps the real native GNOME top bar directly to whichever monitor - you are actively using. This includes all your extensions to maximize productivity.

Dynamic stack layout switching

Zone designer (if you want to design zones, can be used without with auto-tiling)

Features

🪟 Advanced Window Management & Tiling

• Zone Designer Mode: Visually draw, resize, and configure custom rectangular drop zones across your screens.
• Smart Auto-Placement: Automatically assigns new unrecognized windows to zones matching their application name, GNOME desktop metadata category, or explicitly saved app affinity.
• Window Stacks: Fast-switching overlay indicators automatically appear when multiple windows share the exact same drop zone, allowing you to seamlessly expand them into Stack, Column, Row, or Grid views.
• Directional Snapping: Intuitively snap the active window into a neighboring Drop Zone using configurable hotkeys (e.g., Alt + Arrows).
• Quick Tiler: Instantly spawn an 8x8 interactive grid (Default: <Super>g) on the active monitor to reshape the active window by clicking and dragging across cells.
• Pure Automatic Tiling: Optionally enable a master auto-tiling override to dynamically arrange all workspace windows using BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) or Cascading algorithms with configurable gaps.
• Auto-Restore Layouts: Seamlessly remembers and restores your saved window positions based on your current monitor setup, fully supporting fuzzy monitor matching.
• Wayland & X11 Support: Built-in transform strategies ensure smooth execution on both Wayland and X11 compositors.
• Window Exclusions: Define a comma-separated list of application names (like "steam" or "gimp") to keep OmniPanel from managing them.

🖥️ Multi-Monitor Top Bar

• Active Toolbar Movement: Your true GNOME panel, including all system tray indicators and extensions, seamlessly follows your mouse to the active screen.
• Animation Effects: Choose between Instant, Fade, Slide Down, or Pop animations when the panel moves between screens.
• Panel Appearance Controls: Apply a custom background color to the active monitor's top bar, and make inactive screens translucent or completely hide them to reduce distractions.
• Show Desktop Button: Adds a dedicated button to the top bar to instantly minimize and restore windows on your current monitor.
• Zero Configuration Sync: Because it uses the native GNOME components, your clock format and all extension settings are perfectly and automatically synced across monitors.

Installation

1. Create the extension directory:

   mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/omnipanel@christian/schemas

2. Copy the extension files (extension.js, prefs.js, metadata.json, stylesheet.css) into the root of that directory.
3. Copy the org.gnome.shell.extensions.omnipanel.gschema.xml file into the schemas directory.
4. Compile the GSettings schema:

   glib-compile-schemas ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/omnipanel@christian/schemas/

5. Log out and log back in (or restart GNOME Shell).
6. Enable the extension via the terminal or the GNOME Extensions app:

   gnome-extensions enable omnipanel@christian

Configuration

You can configure OmniPanel using the official GNOME Extensions app. Navigate to OmniPanel and click the gear icon to adjust movement speed, animations, opacities, and colors.

Author

Christian Wittenberg

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 (GPL-2.0)