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Katai avatar Ubuntu

Is there any way to label each desktop individually?

gw flag
Katai

I'm usually working with 3x3 Desktops, with the tendency to separate them by active projects or clients for the workday (for example, all consoles going to project A on one desktop, all consoles going to project B on another).

This is fine in most cases, but when there's a lot of stuff going on at once it can quickly become confusing.

Is there some way to label a Desktop? Either on the 3x3 Grid view (when switching around with CTRL+ALT+Arrows), some kind of gnome plugin to just add a Box with a word in it, or a custom background for each desktop?

Maybe there's an obvious solution, but I never really played around with gnome. I still use the defaults.

Gnome Shell: 3.28.4

Ubuntu: 18.04.5 LTS

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paladin avatar
kr flag
paladin
You may set a different background image for each desktop, or change interface colors, otherwise just use some kind of note-desktop widget like `sudo apt install xfce4-notes-plugin` and put a note-desktop widget on each of your desktops and set those to `always on top`.
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cn flag
Rinzwind
Gnome uses extensions. Examples: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/551/workspace-labels/ both unmaintained though (no idea if those work). 1st link has a list of other possible extensions
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paladin avatar
kr flag
paladin
PS you might just use any editor, like _gedit_ and set it to always been shown on top
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Katai avatar
gw flag
Katai
@paladin Yeah I'm currently doing something similar, as a makeshift solution - but it's just not very practical long-term :)
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Katai avatar
gw flag
Katai
@Rinzwind at this point, since the extension seems to be written with JS (and I'm really looking for something proper) I might end up just writing / maintaining my own solution then. I'll be looking into it, I guess!
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Score:9
Katai avatar Ubuntu
gw flag
Katai

Alright, thanks to the comments and especially Rinzwind, I managed to find a solution:

Turns out, I was already using Workspace Grid. While not obvious on how to do it, the extension offers support for custom labels:

  1. Install and activate the extension.
  2. Configure the extension - you can do this directly on the website (I didn't realize that). Make sure to turn workspace labels ON.

enter image description here

  1. If you see the switcher now, it'll number each Workspace ("Workspace 1, 2, 3, etc"). Unless I memorize the numbers, that's not really useful at all. But there is a way to change the label.

  2. Open a console, type dconf-editor. Navigate to /org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/workspace-names. Set "Use default value" to OFF and add an array of labels.

enter image description here

Labels go from left to right, top to bottom. If you have a 3x3 grid, and want to label the bottom left workspace, it's the 7th index in the array. If you want to just remove the default naming "Workspace X" for a particular workspace, just use ' ' (space); an empty string '' won't work.

That's it! Works like a charm, at least if you use workspace-grid. I'm not sure if it's properly supported on later versions of Gnome, as the 1-star comments imply that there are issues.

Additional documentation can be found on https://github.com/zakkak/workspace-grid

Please keep in mind that this extension is no longer in development.

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vanadium avatar
cn flag
vanadium
Thanks for sharing. Do not hesitate to "accept" your own question. This is perfectly fine on this site. Accepting an answer hints users that at least a good solution can be found here. You still have like workspace indicators around - also in this context, your method to "label" these other than "1,2,3,4" is useful.
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Katai avatar
gw flag
Katai
@vanadium Yeah I will do so in 2 days, if I don't forget (and no-one else has something better); I have to wait for the timer first. Thanks for reminding me :)
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nleanba avatar
gh flag
nleanba
This solution also works with the (still actively maintained) “Space Bar” extension, _iff_ it’s “smart workspace names” are disabled. Adding this here because I had a similar problem using that extension with not wanting to manually rename each workspace after each restart anew.
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