Hi, i think this is the right place or maybe i should have made an issue in the Gnome Shell. But I am not sure so I am putting it here.
Basically like we can pin apps we should be able to pin text, images to dash through dnd. I thought it can be better than a clipboard, and also almost like a vault space where we can store anything which we need often. And i thought its cool. So here i am.
TBH i am not a ux/ui designer and this idea can be entirelly dumb.
I love your idea and it might be a great one. At the ubuntu summit 25.10 a UX designer who has been in the industry and has worked fr all the big people suggested such an idea as an example of a change in the UX or UI. He wanted to encourage more ideas. Feel free to watch the whole vide (43 minutes long) or skip to the part he dsecribes it. Time stamp: 28:00 to 30:03
yeah so if a UX designer who has made changes to the apple ecosystem and to the windows could suggest your exact idea it has to be decent. Yeah.
Question: Is this idea meant to work like in macOS, where you can pin files and folders to the dock, or as an temporary place instead of the clipboard?
Since I’m not sure which one you’ve meant, I’ll give an opinion on both:
[…] work like in macOS, where you can pin files and folders to the dock, […]
To be honest, I don’t think that would work well inside of GNOME, at least not the vanilla one.
On macOS, the dock is part of the, let’s call it, “work view”. Its in the same view as where you work inside an application window or with the desktop files.
In this environment, having the ability to pin files and folders to the dock can make sense.
On GNOME though, the dash is part of the activities view. It is separated from where you work and is instead where you manage your open apps.
Since this is in another view, separated from where you would use the files and folders, I don’t see it would be a great fit.
[…] as an temporary place instead of the clipboard.
I could see this work, potentially.
The idea doesn’t sound bad on paper: You can temporally place something you need into an drop place, and drag it into another app where you need it.
That being said, this is something that would happen in the “work view”, so I could see this working better as an separate UI element than as a part of the dash.
Also, there are quite some open question.
Like, say I move a file with it: Does it move or copy the file?
Or would it be possible to drag tabs into it?
I could see the argument that you should be able to drag, say a Epiphany tab into the space. Then you could drag it out on a new workspace for a new window. Or you could drag it into a text document to make a link.
I could see this work, but it would need to be worked out in more detail. What can it handle, how does it handle it, how would you control it.
And if a good design concept has been made, it could be tested with an extension.
I wouldn’t say the idea is dumb, but there are many questions that would need good answers.