The power of Gnome Shell lies in its extensionability. It is this power that transforms the barely unusable vanilla Gnome Shell desktop environement into a powerful and extremely  usable and productive desktop environment. Gnome shell has a number of useful installations to enhance the user experience.  To learn how to install and enable them using the Gnome Tweak tool check out  our post on Installing and using Gnome Shell.  In this post we will look at some must have Gnome shell extensions

Favourites Panel Extension

This extension puts all the shortcuts in the favourites panel on the top panel. This gives a quicker way to launch applications. However, the shorcuts cannot be added or removed from the top panel directly, you will have to do addition and deletion in the favourites panel only. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.

Favourites Panel at work

Shutdown Menu Extension

In Gnome Shell by default there is no option to Shutdown, Sleep, Standby or Hibernate the system directly. The power options can only be accessed after logging out of the Gnome Shell. This extension solves this annoyance by putting the shutdown option in the user menu.This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.

Shut Down option in the usermenu

The Power options when clicked

Applications Menu Extension

This extension provides the Applications Menu by replacing the Activities on the Top left corner. Now we can forget that large tiled icons and browse the applications as we used to. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.

The Applications Menu Extension at work

Bottom Panel Extension

The Bottom panel extension creates a static panel at the bottom. This panel lists the open applications on that workspace in the left, and adds a workspace switcher on the right side. The Workspace shortcuts are also changed to Ctrl+Alt+left and right instead of up and down. This extension is a part of the zip file downloaded.

The Bottom Panel Extension at Work

Move Clock Extension

This extension moves the clock to the right side next to the User Menu. This doesn't give any kind of performance boost or productivity increase, but puts the final piece of our Gnome2 experience in place. And I confess that this is not a must have :)

Clock moved to the right

User Theme Extension

This extension helps you to choose the Gnome Shell themes using the Gnome Tweak Tool. With this extension enabled, the Gnome Tweak tool can list any Gnome Shell theme in ~/.themes or in /usr/share/themes. You can switch between the themes without reloading shell. Install it by running this in terminal:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

Selecting Gnome Shell themes using the Gnome Tweak Tool

See our article Top 5 Gnome Shell Themes to try out really good shell themes.

Places and Bookmarks Extension

The Places and bookmarks extension adds the a MyPlaces menu to the top bar. This reduces the need to opening the file manager everytime and navigate to the required folders. You can download it here.

The result of Places and Bookmarks menu Extension

You can also download the same extension to produce a iconized menu  here.

Right Hot Corner Extension

This extension adds a extra hot corner to the right top corner which works similar to the left corner. This reduces the work of dragging the mouse from left corner to the right edge all the time to switch workspaces or move windows between workspaces. you can download it here.

If you are a bit uncomfortable with hot corners on both sides you can download this extension and shift the left corner to the right corner.

These are the ones that will hekp you increase your Gnome Shell Experience and productivity. if you find anything else more useful comment it here :)