If you find Linux MInt’s on-screen display (OSD) when changing volume and brightness a little boxy there’s a neat extension that changes their look entirely.
The “Horizontal OSD” extension for Linux Mint (yes, Linux Mint has extensions too) reformats Cinnamon’s default volume and screen brightness indicators from a vertical box to a horizontal bar. It’s a subtle tweak that I think gives the Cinnamon desktop an extra splash of modernity (GNOME Shell switched its OSD from boxes to bars last year).
While the look of the horizontal OSD blends in perfectly with the rest of the Linux Mint’s default look (meaning out of the box it looks totally native) you do get ample controls to adjust the appearance.
From the extension’s settings, you can fine-tune almost every element of the OSD, from the colours and opacity of the background to the width of the bar; the height of the value bar; and the border radius. For ultimate control you can even apply your own custom .CSS.
There are also behaviour controls to make the OSD appear on screen for longer (or shorter) than Linux Mint’s default values. You also get controls to adjust the position of the OSD bubble relative to the screen size. By playing around with these settings you can basically reposition the bar to any part of the screen.
Interested? You can get Horizontal OSD on Cinnamon Spices, or (a faster way) install it in using the Cinnamon desktop’s Extensions app. Just find the ‘Horizontal OSD’ in the “Downloads” tab and hit the install icon, then switch back to the “Manage” tab, select the extension, and hit the ‘+’ icon to enable it.