Extension Manager 0.4 Intros Compatibility Checker, Adaptive UI

A sizeable update to the (really rather indispensable, imho) Extension Manager app is rolling out on Flathub.

Not heard of this nifty desktop tool before? It lets you install, configure, and manage GNOME extensions without needing to involve a web browser or any “connector” packages. Just install the Extension Manager and that’s it, you’re good to go.

The new Extension Manager 0.4 update intros a “full adaptive mobile-friendly user interface”, which is ideal if you regularly resize the app during use, as well as overhauled error and crash reporting; and support for the new gnome-extensions:// URL scheme.

You’ll notice that the toggle switch to disable all extensions has been moved out of the header bar. It now sits at the top of the “installed” view.

Extension search results are paginated (that is: separated into pages of results which you click a button to load) rather than presented, as before, a near-endless scrolling list. Plus, the tool now hides unsupported extensions by default. There is a setting to override this, should you want it.

When open, Extension Manager’s ‘search’ field holding text shows extension suggestions. This was previously hardcoded to (one of my fave extensions) Blur My Shell but is now widened to support a range of popular, and frequently updated extension suggestions.

Something handy: the app now has a built-in upgrade assistant that you can can use to check which of your currently installed extensions are compatible with a different versions of the GNOME desktop before you make the upgrade. Pretty neat!

Performance and stability improvements, better error detection and handling, and minor UI tweaks to better conform to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines roundout the change-log.

Extension Manager is free, open source software that works whenever GNOME Shell does. You can install the latest version from Flathub as a Flatpak app, though an older version is available to install from the Ubuntu archives on 22.04 LTS and above.