kitsch

Kitsch is a collection of cheap, popular, and marketable improvements to Gnome. One could consider it applying a cosmetic surgery to Gnome.

• remove activities
• remove application menu
• change the wallpaper in a configurable interval using local pictures

This extension does not come with any button on the panel.

Configuration

If no configuration is found, a default config is restored at ~/.config/kitsch.json. Whenever the configuration file changes, the extension reloads automatically.

The configuration has three segments: settings and hideFromPanel and wallpaper.

Example

{
  "settings": {
    "loglevel": "debug"
  },
  "hideFromPanel": {
    "activities": true,
    "appMenu": true
  },
  "wallpaper": {
    "interval": 600,
    "recursive": true,
    "shuffle": true,
    "paths": [
      "~/Pictures"
    ],
    "mimetypes": [
      "image/jpeg",
      "image/png"
    ]
  }
}

settings

• loglevel: (string) the log level of the extenions. any of the following values is valid:
  • debug
  • info
  • warning (default)
  • error

hideFromPanel

• activities: (boolean) hide the activities button on the left of the top bar
  

• appMenu: (boolean) hide the application menu on the top bar
  

• *: (boolean) one can add any item that refers to a direct child of imports.ui.main.panel.statusArea

wallpaper

• interval: (number) interval to update the wallpaper in seconds
• recursive: (boolean) whether to read folders recursively
• shuffle: (boolean) change the wallpapers in order they appear or shuffled
• paths: ([]) list of paths to files or folders
  • if a path is a folder, it will be parsed no matter the settings of recursive; only for folders inside such path, the setting matters
  • BE CAREFUL with large folders and the recursive setting: it may break gnome
  • Folders are read during startup only. Changes to the folder are not recognized.
• mimetypes: ([]) mime types to use for wallpapers
  • BE AWARE: if you don't know exactly what you are doing, leave it alone

Change History

• v1: 06.02.2021
  • initial version:
    • remove activities button
    • remove application menu
    • shuffle wallpapers
• v2: 06.02.2021
  • adjusted the description in the metadata
• v3: 07.04.2021
  • version bump for gnome 40
• v4: 14.06.2021
  • adjusted gnome shell version requirement
  • adjusted verbosity when parsing folders
  • adjusted default verbosity level to warning
• v5: 14.06.2021
  • load log level from settings
• v6: 11.04.2022
  • add compatibility for gnome 41 & 42

ToDo

Plans. For whenever I will get bored again.

• configuration UI

License

Kitsch: a collection of cheap, popular, and marketable improvements to Gnome Copyright (C) 2021 Christian Klaue [mail@ck76.de]

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Individual licenses may be granted upon request.