If you remember that desktop picture widget for GNOME I wrote about last year, but found it a bit too basic for your personalisation preferences, you weren’t alone. Another user felt it could lacked enough flexibility, so forked and improved it. Picture Desktop Widget Remake improves on the original. It lets add multiple picture widgets to your Ubuntu desktop, and assign each one a different folder to pull images from, at random. Plus, you can set the size, position, border radius and aspect ratio of each widget individually. Each photo frame has its own on/off button in Preferences, so you […]
You're reading Add multiple picture widgets to your Ubuntu desktop, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Fans of the Papirus icon theme will be pleased to hear there’s a new update – the first since May 2025. Papirus’s first update in 2026 (the tardiness of which its maintainer, Serhii Yeremenko, apologises for) brings more than 80 new or updated icons spanning applications, games and user-interface icons, plus new file-mimetypes and revised symlinks. Frequent updates are why Papirus icons are popular with Linux users, and they have been for many years. Often, Linux icon packs debut with a big bang; launch momentum fuels a couple of revisions, but then things go quiet as people and maintainers move on. Papirus […]
The official Discord desktop app supports Linux but it doesn’t make much effort to fit in, which is why alternative clients are popular – not least because they can be themed. Discord GNOME Theme by developer ~ricewind012, is so named because, basically, that’s what it is: a custom theme that restyles Discord to look more like Adwaita and follow the GNOME HIG (well, as close as Discord’s CSS allows). A reminder: Ubuntu’s Yaru theme is based (heavily) on upstream Adwaita, so while this theme won’t give an exact match on Ubuntu, it’s closer than stock. As it’s all CSS, it […]
Dynamic Music Pill, the blingy GNOME Shell extension that adds now playing track info, media controls and even real-time lyrics to your desktop, has gained some new options. “Like what?”, you ask… If you don’t want to see the name of the artists in the panel pill, you no longer have to: a ‘show artist’ toggle lets you hide it. The extension already has an option to dynamically hide artist labels if there’s not enough room to display it alongside the title. On that topic, when long artist names and track titles combine, the pill will scroll the labels from […]
Frosted blur effect is coming to System76's COSMIC desktop, giving apps and desktop elements a modern feel. These images shared by the team show how it looks.
Ubuntu's Yaru theme will closely follow the vanilla GNOME Shell design in the upcoming 26.04 release, as its developers aim to reduce the maintenance burden. 
The 2 Wallpapers GNOME extension changes wallpaper when apps open, letting you fake blurred window look in apps that support transparency – clever!
Want Firefox to dynamically match website colours? This free add-on changes toolbars based on page colours for Vivaldi-style theming. Works on all platforms.
If you want weather information displayed directly on your Ubuntu desktop, the Desktop Widgets GNOME Shell extension is worth checking out. See why inside.
A new GNOME Shell extension that turns the top bar into a compact, movable panel, so you can customise your Ubuntu desktop to suit your workflow.
A choice of system accent colour could be on offer in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Devs have already created a working demo to pick an accent colour for Yaru.
I'm writing about a cursor theme cos I never write about cursor themes! Phinger Cursors is a high-quality pointer pack suitable for light and dark desktops.
'Burn My Windows' is the GNOME Shell extension that just keeps on giving. New effect and a much-request option included in its latest update.
It's a bit showy but I can't deny that I'm partial to a bit of translucency on the desktop. This patch for Mutter brings an opaque sheen to GTK apps.
Give the Ubuntu desktop a new look and feel by installing the Papirus icon theme. The icon set covers thousands of apps and can be installed from a PPA.
Want to change Ubuntu's login screen background? I walk through the steps for changing GDM background to a solid colour, gradient, or custom image.
A couple of new Star Trek-esque effects have been added to the ‘Burn my Windows’ GNOME Shell extension. If you’ve not yet heard about this bling-tactic add-on, it animates closing windows (and optionally dialogs) in some spectacularly over the top ways — just like Compiz of old. Burn My Windows 8 is available from the GNOME Extensions website and it adds there new effects. ‘Energize A’ disperses your windows in a flurry of sci-fi particles: ‘Energize B’ dispatches your windows and dialogs in a way that reminds of the famous Star Trek transporter: The new ‘Wisp’ effects is described as […]