u/leandromqrs

Aurora Shell 50.12 is out 🎸 Choose your dock edge and icon size, preview open windows on hover, and read what else is new in “Dock, Dock, Dockin’ on Heaven’s Door”: https://blog.luminusos.org/posts/aurora-shell-50-12/

Hi everyone,

I would like to introduce Aurora Shell, an open-source GNOME Shell extension developed as part of LuminusOS.

GNOME is clean, focused, and intentionally minimal. However, daily desktop use often reveals small missing conveniences: a proper dock, clipboard history, per-application volume controls, system tray icons, meeting reminders, and better privacy while screen sharing.

Aurora Shell was created to address those gaps without replacing GNOME or forcing users into a completely different desktop environment.

It works as a collection of independent modules. You can enable only the features you want and leave everything else disabled.

Some of its main features include:

• A smart dock that works independently on each monitor
• Automatic dock hiding, edge reveal, Trash, and removable drive shortcuts
• Searchable clipboard history with pinned items
• Per-application volume controls directly in Quick Settings
• Weather and upcoming calendar meetings beside the clock
• Meeting notifications with join, snooze, and dismiss actions
• System tray support for background applications
• Automatic light and dark theme switching
• Fixes for missing application icons
• Picture-in-Picture windows that stay on top
• Opening directly on the desktop instead of the Overview
• Better focus behavior for newly launched applications
• An X11 indicator for applications running through XWayland
• Privacy features for screen sharing, including automatic Do Not Disturb
• Screenshot annotation tools with drawing, shapes, text, and numbered markers
• Optional local OCR for screenshots

The goal is not to make GNOME look like another desktop environment. Aurora keeps GNOME’s overall design and workflow, while making common tasks easier and more discoverable.

Aurora is also modular by design. Every feature has its own lifecycle, settings, and enable/disable option. Turning off a module removes it completely instead of leaving changes behind.

Privacy is another important part of the project. Clipboard history and other personal data remain on the local machine and are never sent to third parties.

Aurora Shell is written in TypeScript, distributed under the GPL-3.0 license, and currently targets GNOME Shell 50 and newer.

You can learn more or install it here:

• Website: https://aurora.luminusos.org/
• GNOME Extensions(Latest version is in review): https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/9389/aurora-shell/
• GitHub: https://github.com/luminusOS/aurora-shell

Aurora is also intended as a proving ground for desktop ideas that could eventually mature and become part of GNOME itself.

What everyday feature do you think GNOME should include by default?