Dash to Dock now supports GNOME 40 — officially.
Work to get the popular desktop dock extension jiving with GNOME 40 desktop got underway back in April. Progress was, as we reported, swift and functional, but to try it out users needed to manually install a development version from Github.
Well, no more.
You can now install Dash to Dock on GNOME 40 from the GNOME extensions site using a compatible web browser.
Version 70 of the add-on gains official support for GNOME 40 and its horizontal workspace and application launcher. The dock can be placed on different sides of the screen, and remain accessible once exiting the overview (unlock GNOME Shell’s native dock).
As a result of the changes needed to support GNOME 40 this version of Dash to Dock does drop support for earlier version of GNOME Shell. It sounds harsh there’s no real impact; the v69 version works just fine, and as no new features have been added, it’s not missing anything essential, either.
Although Ubuntu Dock is based on Dash to Dock (and many of the extension’s additional settings are still accessible in Ubuntu using dconf) some prefer to install ‘the real deal’ rather than futz around with Ubuntu’s fork.
Not that doing so is without a few caveats.
First up, you need to restart GNOME Shell after installing the extension (press alt + f2, type r, and hit enter/return). If you don’t do this you may find that the application launcher is invisible.
SecondIy, I did find that changing Dash to Dock settings did affect the Ubuntu Dock too. The changes remained even after I uninstalled Dash to Dock and logged out and back in to reset GNOME Shell.
Other than that, go get it and give it a spin.
Dash to Dock is free, open source software. Source code is available on GitHub (alongside package downloads) but the best way to install the extension is from the GNOME Extensions website:
Oh yes… you can’t install GNOME extensions using the Firefox Snap app included by default in Ubuntu 21.10. It’s a ridiculous situation, but until the messaging host bug is addressed it’s not going to work.
Workarounds? Install the repo/deb version of Firefox; grab the Firefox tar from the Mozilla website; or spin up a Chromium-based browser (e.g., Google Chrome) to install and manage extensions specifically.
You can also install a GNOME extension manually. First, download the extension as a .zip from the GNOME extensions website (on the listing pages select your GNOME Shell version, then extension version).
Then, to install the extension use the GNOME extension CLI: gnome-extensions install $PATH_TO_ZIP. Remember to restart GNOME Shell after. You can get future updates via the GNOME Extensions app (which we put in our list of things to do after installing Ubuntu 21.10).
Thanks JustPerfection