I especially used the Show Details now and then. How can I now quickly find the details of an application?
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Not as quickly but if you have the app running you can open Activities Overview and right-click the app icon on the dash, which also opens the app menu and you can Show Details from there.
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I have used the extension and this is my experience/opinions;
- I donāt notice the app menu being gone.
- I dislike the fact that there is no indication for an app being opened.
- I dislike the zoom effect, specially when closing a window. It feels unnecessary and gimmicky.
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I am able to discern which app is active looking at the windows but that is something i feel not everyone might find easy to hop back in.
As stated above, I agree.
After some more time with the extension I have to agree the pulse effect happening when closing a window feels more distracting than helpful. Especially when Iām on a workspace with several non-maximized windows and Iām opening & closing windows frequently.
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I like this approach! It is not so easy to find though, if you do not know that this exists.
I have tried this extension, I would like to point out that the speed of the window focus animation is too quick, personally I feel some sense of sharpness from the quick animation, and also I donāt always have time to notice this quick animation.
I tried changing the settings to get something more pleasant feeling from animation.
These duration parameters more satisfied me:
Scale Up Animation Duration - 124
Scale Down Animation Duration - 164
Update: After testing this for some more time, the effect became indeed more annoying and distracting than I thought it would, while not really solving the original issue of knowing what window is now on focus at any time.
Just two examples:
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When using gnome-sushi (or other fast image viewer) to quickly preview files: Every time I exit gnome-sushi, the underlying Nautilus window bounces. This can happen quite quickly in a short period of time when looking for a specific picture, and it creates a dizzy and distracting effect.
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When closing a window: In those cases, an arbitrary window will bounce as a result of gaining focus. And by āarbitraryā I mean that the user wonāt necessarily want to focus on the window that will gain focus after closing the previous one. In my testing, I ended up closing an app and seeing another one ābounceā from the corner of my eye while looking for the one I actually wanted to use next. Itās distracting, adds a lot of cognitive noise and doesnāt help much with the original issue.
My conclusion: knowing what window is currently gaining focus (which is the only thing this would solve) is not relevant enough to merit such a level of attention grabbing, leading in many cases to distraction and unwanted cognitive load.
Iād prefer any of the alternative approaches I suggested:
- Keep the app menu where it is, but remove its functions as a menu and make it just highlight (bounce) the active window on click, making it self-explanatory and useful for one clear purpose.
(Or just keep it as it is) - Highlight the active window only in the overview, keeping its title visible even when youāre not hovering with the mouse and using the system-wide highlight color on the app icon and name.
8 Likes
I really like approach 1, or maybe make it not clickeable, just the label and icon and the loading indicator i feel that would be enough to get rid of confusion while still displaying the current appās name
This is the plan. A lot of functionality already has been moved out of the app menu over the last few years, without being removed entirely. No core functionality will be lost, it will just be relocated to other, more appropriate places 
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Iāve tried using this for a few days. Thanks for sharing the test Hereās some feedback:
- I donāt notice 99% of the time that the application menu is gone. Perhaps the only case I miss is seeing the spinner to know that a slow app is still loading (rather than having misclicked).
- I donāt see the new effect often because I am using two monitors and usually have a maximised window on each.
- As a result it feels a bit inconsistent, because maximised windows on a multimonitor setup have no indication of which one became focused.
- I think if I hadnāt been told, it would take me a while to understand the meaning of the scale effect, as I only see it when closing a window or using super+tab. I would expect to see it also when clicking on an unfocused window.
- The effect is mostly quite pleasant, but I find it a bit jarring if Iām already looking at the window before it gets focused (e.g. reading text, and it shifts around).
- I agree with others that the names of apps are much less prominent in the desktop now. I didnāt even think of this before the change, but there arenāt many places the app name is visible. I could see it causing issues for new users.
4 Likes
sorry, it stared working right after i installed extensions manager and just started it for the first time
i donāt like the effect, itās very annoying
+1 for removing that menu, it was not useful
Iāve been using it for a few days and I must say I like it quite a bit, it fits really well with my workflow of having one focus app in one desktop and a bunch of utilities ones in another.
After using it I never felt lost anymore when switching desktops as i used to without it.
The only thing i miss is the top-bar spinning wheel but otherwise I like it.
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First of all thank you for involving everyone in the design process.
Regarding the app menu in the top bar - this change is unnoticed by me. Since I do not know any application that puts something useful in that menu, since the early GNOME shell era. As about focus - I remember when in the first version top bar menu has big color icon in that case it helps notice active window. As for now - I do not watch on it at all. But i believe am from category of advanced users and this menu marks app name + some apps still have useful items in this menu (maybe some one use it).
As for animation effect. Tested animation effect feels like satle, but after several days of testing it becomes very annoying!
+ it blurs window (I believe it could not be solved in any case).
+ it not play well with a11y requirements if user prefer reduce motion
As a solution - just a simple border around the window could be drawn for about 2 sec. It would be consistent with buttons focus effect. If need more prominent effect this border could be scaled for a moment.
p.s. window focus effect super helpful when switch workspaces
p.p.s. this effect does not help in tiling setup
Hope this helps.
2 Likes
I agree with cajitaās possible issues, replacing an indicator status for a bouncing animation might sound like a good at first, but after using it a day or two it the animation can get tiresome or even gimmicky at times, I can get used to it but I am not sure for the many other users out there.
We have to understand that thereās also a large amount people that really donāt like animations, if they somehow managed to hack a āDisable Place Indicator Animationā extension (or just disable Animations in the Accessibility settings menu), then it means they will no longer have a way to tell which window has focus because the App Menu Indicator will be gone as well.
Thereās also the blurriness issue each window gets for a fraction of a second when the bouncing animation plays, which can turn into a disadvantage for those who majorly works with text and coding (if not cause a headache, I havenāt gotten one yet but still 
).
And the thousand of other possible scenarios that can pop up with the animation, someone already reported that Nautilus bounces quite repetitively while using Sushi back to back, developers might fix these issues easily, but whatās the guarantee it will be the same for the other thousand applications? I am already imagining many new issues popping up in both GNOME and Third Party Applications issue trackers with problems titled like: ārepetitive bouncing when switching appsā.
How will users be able to tell if this problem is related to GNOME or the third party application theyāre using?
My suggestion for this will be to yes, get rid of the App Menu (I personally never had any issues with it) but not the indicator, the Top Bar is already clean enough for something else to disappear, maybe add a flash or animation to the indicator?
I find this approach rather easy rather than worry about what other issues a bouncing animation for each window might spawn. Apologies if I came as a little bit aggresive, I just started imagining the possible reception of this animation, I kind of dig it though! But I am not so sure for everyone else.
5 Likes
After trying the extension for a longer period of time I have to say that while I initially found the animation cool, it has now got tiring. I think that the focus indicator of the app menu is superior. Itās always there, available at a glance and doesnāt distract you.
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Foremost, it makes sense that thereās no focus animation when the window is maximized, but in a multiscreen context, itās a little odd that I have a maximized window on one of the screens and a non-maximized one on the other. When using Alt + Tab, a window shows that it has been focused thanks to the animation, but when I change the window quickly, it is not possible to know if it has focused on the maximized window since there is no such indicator.
This gets worse when I change workspaces and if the focus is on one of the maximized windows on one of the screens, it is not possible to know which window was focused on.
1 Like
TLDR
(1) The focus-animation is easy to miss, and therefore feels insufficient without modifying the default preferences. (2) As others have mentioned, I have experienced that the lack of focus-animation on maximized windows has been a challenge. (3) A manual way to trigger the focus animation would also be helpful.
Experience
I have a setup with a laptop and two external monitors. After i switch virtual-desktops, it is common for the in-focus window be on a secondary monitor and it is very easy to miss the animation. The animation feels subtle and easy to miss when the previous in-focus window was on the center monitor, and now the new in-focus monitor is on the left-or-right monitor.
For now, I have increased the scale to 120% and ScaleUpAnimationDuration to 200ms which seems to help me locate the window, though this does not aid with locating maximized windows.
My initial gut reaction would be to have a way to manually trigger the animation too. Ie, press CTL two times, and the focus-animation is triggered on-demand. However, I recognize this feels like a workaround that works well for my keyboard-centric workflow, and maybe not for others.
1 Like
Revisting the AppMenu
It seems like in 2018 there was a consensus for removing the AppMenu due to mainly: users not using it and lack of use cases. The one thing preventing itās removal is the Window Focus feature. Should we revisit this consensus in 2022 first?
The AppMenu is much more discoverable than it used to be in 2018.
The top panel buttons suffer from a lack of discoverability. During use cases for GNOME 40, it was seen that users would skip over the āAcivitiesā button, Allan Day suggested one of the reasons was that the buttons had a lack of a strong visual presence, that it was just a label instead of what it actually was (Rethink name of "Activities" button (why not e.g. "Overview"?) (#3590) Ā· Issues Ā· GNOME / gnome-shell Ā· GitLab).
Something similar could be happening to the AppMenu. Although it represnts what it is well (the current focused application), the AppMenu is mainly text and by itself wonāt bring much attention.
In 2018 it was even less discoverable. Back then the top bar buttons didnāt have the pill highlight when hovering or clicking them rather, only a slight highlight. Maybe things have changed in 2022 and more people are aware of the button, the problem now is: itās not very useful.
More use cases
One way to add more use cases for the AppMenu is to give it more functions. Just as inspiration, this is what MacOS offers on itās Menu Bar App Menu: āHideā, " Hide Others", āShow Allā and āQuit/Force Quitā (The menu bar - System experiences - Components - Human Interface Guidelines - Design - Apple Developer).
PS: The Tour App can explain that these functions are there and help the user, but this is gettint out of the discussion focus.
PSS: The App Menu gives some uses for the top bar. They may be rare use cases, but they are accessible and that access is given by the top bar, without it the top bar would be losing functionality and gaining empty space.
Windows Focus Animation and The App Menu
The AppMenu and the new Window Focus animation
(Iāll call it WFA for now) displays two different informations. WFA would show which window has gained new focus vs lhe AppMenu that shows what window has focus. A good comparison to this would be a notification toast and the same notification in the calendar popup, the first tells the user a new notification just appeared and the other one shows the new notification.
Conclusion
Taking into consideration that the WFA and the App Menu arenāt one to one replaceables and that the original issues that caused the App Menuās removal in 2018 might not be the same or can be fixed. It might be worth it to revisit itās removal.
PS: Hopwfully what I wrote here doesnāt sound like non-sense! Not a good day so far, but I thought it was important to comment about this!
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