Adapting android/android OEM's 'close all' or 'cleara all' for recent apps in gnome's Workspace overview

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Proposal: “Clear Workspace” Action in GNOME Shell

Many Android OEMs such as Samsung OneUI and Xiaomi HyperOS include a “Close All” or “Clear All” button to quickly dismiss all running apps.

On GNOME, users who open many temporary apps often forget to close them, leaving the workspace overview cluttered with unused windows. Personally, I tend to leave apps open “just in case,” and later I end up with a bloated workspace. I’m sure I’m not the only one. :smile:

Here is a working preview of the said proposal:

Current Problems with Implementation

  • Workspace vs. Workspaces
    • Implementing a per-workspace “Clear” action feels like the right approach, rather than a global “Clear All Workspaces.” However, iterating over windows and their transients (via MetaWindow.foreach_transient) doesn’t always close everything. Some dialogs remain open (e.g. the GNOME Settings → About window).
  • App Quit Behavior
    • Trying to replicate the app quit request (like what Dash’s “Quit” menu option does) also has issues.
    • If the same application has multiple windows across workspaces (e.g. Nautilus in workspace 1 and workspace 2), the quit request closes all instances, not just the ones in the active workspace.
    • This breaks the expected behavior of “Clear Workspace,” which should only affect the current workspace.

Why This Matters

  • Tidiness: Lets users reset a workspace in a single action.
  • Accessibility: Reduces repetitive manual window management.
  • Performance: Useful for quickly freeing resources on lower-end systems.
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My Android phone has that, too. I never used it though and, thus, have no experience with this feature.

I’d personally be worried about misclicks that would cause the open windows to close and thus potentially cause data loss for the user – which would be quite a bad user experience.

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Adding a warning dialog that can optionaly be disabled by a labeled checkbox like ‘Never show this dialog again’ is also an option. Or an OSD saying ‘Click again’ if a warning dialog is too much.

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IMO this should start as an extension, so that it can be tested in practice and considered as a default feature if successful and popular.

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