A new version of the ArcMenu GNOME extension is available for download, and it’ll be of particular interest to those who want to make Ubuntu look like Windows 11.
The latest update to Arc Menu includes a pair of new menu layouts: ‘Launcher’ and ‘Eleven’. The latter of these is inspired by the redesigned ‘Start Menu’ set to ship in Windows 11 when released later this year.
As you can see in the hero screenshot, it’s not a 1:1 clone. As a shell extension ArcMenu inherits whatever GNOME Shell theme you’re using, so if you want an über Windows-y look you’ll need to install a Windows GNOME Shell theme too.
A smattering of changes to preexisting layouts also ship in this update, including new names for the Unity-inspired ‘Dash’ and ‘KRunner’ options, plus some tweaks to the Windows layout to toggle Frequent Apps and Pinned Apps.
There’s also a redesigned menu layouts section. This makes browsing, previewing, and picking menu layouts more intuitive. A few sections within the settings panel have been renamed and re-ordered to be more user friendly.
ArcMenu also lets users reorder the power options, adds new ‘Hybrid Sleep’ and ‘Hibernate’ toggles, gains an option to disable scroll view fade effects, and adds drag-and-drop reordering for Pinned Apps on all layouts.
A concise overview of the key changes in ArcMenu 11 (and 12, for GNOME 40.x): –
- New “Launcher” layout
- New “Eleven” layout
- Renamed Ubuntu Dash and KRunner layouts
- Various minor style/ui changes to misc layouts
- Redesigned menu layouts section
- Drag-and-drop reordering for Pinned Apps
- New algorithm to prevent accidental category activation
- Add Settings Quick Links to ArcMenu button context menu
Arc Menu is free, open source software. Source code (and issue tracker) is on Gitlab.
To run the latest version of Arc Menu you need to be using GNOME 3.36 or later. Note that version 11 and version 12 have the same core features mentioned in this post, but the latter supports GNOME 40.x.
A quick recap for those unaware: the original developer of ArcMenu stepped away from the project around the time of the v48 release. The extension transitioned to a new set of developers. This is why the version number is now a lower value than in earlier articles about the add-on.