Ubuntu – How to activate/deactivate a gnome-shell extension from command line

command linegnomegnome-shell-extension

Let's say I have successully installed my set of gnome-shell extensions.
But I want to deactivate/unactivate from the command line. This is only possible via mouse action, AFAIK.

How can I do that ?

Best Answer

It is well described in the Gnome wiki, quoting:

You can do this with the GSettings key, org.gnome.shell.enabled-extensions, or several tools that manipulate this GSettings key, such as GNOME Tweak Tool or a recent version of gnome-shell-extension-tool.

If you invoke gnome-shell-extension-tool --help, you will see that it is capable of enabling and disabling extensions by their name. For example, the following command enables user themes:

gnome-shell-extension-tool -e user-theme

Oh, and you can get the names of all your locally installed extensions by doing ls ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions. It will give you entries of the form the-name@author.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to backup and restore downloaded gnome-shell extensions

I guess I figured it out. You have to replace (after backuping, for safety) the following three folders with the original ones previously saved from the system you want to clone:

~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions

~/.local/share/gnome-shell/quicklaunch

~/.config/dconf

Then logout and login.

Let me know if it works, or if you find better ways!

(tested on Ubuntu Gnome Shell Remix 12.04)

Ubuntu – Configure gnome-shell extensions from command line

Found the answer by myself in the end.

sudo cp ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/extname/schemas/org.gnome.shell.extensions.extname.gschema.xml \
    /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/ &&
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

Copy and compile the schemas in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions and gsettings will be able to work with them.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to backup and restore downloaded gnome-shell extensions

Ubuntu – Configure gnome-shell extensions from command line

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