Enable the installation of Gnome extensions on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Although the guys at Canonical have made the decision to leave Unity for making the switch to Gnome Shell since its previous version Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark and time passed they have not done things well yet Well, an important point has been forgotten and it really surprises me about it.

The fact of carrying out a migration from one environment to another and releasing it to the public entails a series of tests and beta releases to know all those problems generated in common use before launching a stable version.

However that you forget to carry out the integration of essential functions really it leaves much to be desired.

With only a few days after the official launch of Ubuntu 18.04 during this period you have done your installations and configurations to customize your system, you may have noticed if you got to try installing some gnome extension just can't be done easily.

And this happens because the system does not ship with a special "to connect" function between the extensions and the desktop environment.

It is because of that We must put our hands to be able to install the Gnome extensions in our system.

How to install Gnome Shell extensions on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?

If you want to enjoy the benefits of using the Gnome Shell extensions on your system, we must install an additional package that will function as a bridge between the Gnome extensions website and our system.

For this We must open a terminal and execute the following command:

sudo apt-get install chrome-gnome-shell

Done the installation This additional will work in both Google Chrome, Firefox or Opera, as well as browsers based on these previous ones or that support their system of add-ons from them.

Now the next step is to go to the official website of the Gnome extensions and We can see a section where it tells us that we need a complement to be able to install the extensions directly from our browser.

Or if you prefer:

• For Google Chrome, Chromium, and Vivaldi, install the plugin via Chrome Web Store.
• In Firefox, install the add-on from the site mozilla addons.
• For Opera, install it from the Opera Addons site.

By clicking on the button to install the add-on, it will be added to our browser, you may be asked to restart your browser, just close it and reopen it.

Once this is done, we return to the official page of the Gnome extensions, we will be able to notice that the message has disappeared and a switch appears with which we can install or remove Gnome Shell extensions from the browser.

How to manage Gnome Shell extensions in Ubuntu 18.04?

To have control of these from our system we have a tool that more than one already knows, that's how I'm talking about Gnome TweakTool which has a page to manage the installed Gnome Shell extensions.

To install it they should only look for it as' Gnome Tweaks'in the Ubuntu software application and install it.

Then they should only run the tool tinkering and managing installed Gnome Shell extensions in the "Extensions" tab.

Installing the Gnome extension package from Ubuntu repositories

Ubuntu, as well as several other Linux distributions that have a version or use the Gnome Shell as a desktop environment they usually provide a package with a minimal set of Gnome extensions, regardless of the version of the environment they are using, this package is fully compatible with it.

Basically between 8 to 10 extensions will be installed in the system, for this We only have to open a terminal and execute the following command:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions

Once this is done, we can go to the official website of the extensions or from the Gnome Tweak Tool and we can see the new installed extensions ready to be activated on your system.