I love Gnome Shell, but was bothered by the amount of pixel wasted in its interface. The title bar of window is quite large, and the activity bar is always present. A maximized window still is unable to use a significant amount of pixels in the top of the screen.

This is a major pain on small screen, but even on bigger screen, MOAR pixels for my app is better. After all, the role of my desktop is to allow me to manage my apps in a convenient way. It has to be as discrete as possible.

Using a set of extensions, I was able to achieve the merging of the activity bar and the title bar for maximized window, but recently one of these extensions stopped working and the configuration of the whole stuff was quite complex and unappealing. So I created Pixel Saver, an extension that save brave pixels !

Pixel Saver

The goal is simple : merge the title bar and the activity bar when a window is maximized, in the most natural possible way.

To do so, Pixel Saver do not require any configuration, it fetches the configuration of your title bar and adapt itself accordingly. It is easier for the user, and produce a nice result. Activate the extension and it works !

The title bar is completely gone and integrated to the activity bar.

The extension integrate title bar’s buttons in the activity bar, and change the title of the application menu to reflect the title of the maximized window. Really, nothing more need to be said.

That is Awesome ! I want to install it !

Follow the guide :

1

2

3

4

5

6

git clone https: // github.com / deadalnix / pixel-saver.git

cd pixel-saver

# copy to extensions directory

cp -r pixel-saver @ deadalnix.me ~ / .local / share / gnome-shell / extensions

# activate

gnome-shell-extension-tool -e pixel-saver @ deadalnix.me

Easy ! I hope to get it soon into gnome extension’s website.

A bug report ? A pull request ? Go on the Pixel Saver github’s page !

Happy Pixel Saving !