Dealing with the Lack of Categories in the Application Overview Screen for GNOME Shell 3.8
Published on 10th July 2013 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutesBrowsing through installed applications on computer systems is something that I find useful. While this is usually straightforward, some developers have replaced traditional menus with search boxes. GNOME Shell 3.8 has fallen into this trap. You can add the Applications Menu extension from GNOME Shell Classic, which I've tried, but it sometimes freezes the desktop session, so I don't recommend it.
However, there is a setting that brings back those application categories in the overview screen, and it can be set using dconf-editor. After opening up the application, navigate to org > gnome > shell using the tree in the left-hand panel of the tool. Editing the app-folder-categories entry in the right-hand panel is what adds the categories back for you. The default is ['Utilities', 'Sundry'] and this needs to be changed to ['Utilities', 'Games', 'Sundry', 'Office', 'Network', 'Internet', 'Graphics', 'Multimedia', 'System', 'Development', 'Accessories', 'System Settings', 'Other'].
After making these changes, the application overview screen displays categories in a new layout. Application icons appear in the middle, with categories listed on the right side. Clicking a category opens a panel showing applications within that category, which can then be closed. Navigating through categories requires opening and closing different panels. While the interface behaviour has changed, the core functionality remains, and I've heard GNOME Shell 3.10 will further refine this system.
For those wanting to exit all of this and get something like the old GNOME 2, it is possible to add the Classic Session. In Fedora 19, it's a matter of issuing something like the following command:
sudo yum -y install gnome-classic-session
In reality, this is a case of adding a number of extensions and changing the panel colour from black to grey, but it works without needing the category tweak that I described above. The Application Menu extension does need more stability hardening before I'd trust it completely, though. There's no point having a nicer interface if it's going to freeze up on you too often.
Thanks.
Is it somehow possible tto also have an "ALL category/drawer", where then all applications would be showing? Suppose if some app belongs to many category and cannot remember nor guess the right one, don't remember the app name (for the string search), or just would like to browse all.
So having both ways, both category view and ALL view?
great