GNOME users, I have some questions for you! This won’t single-handedly drive the design of GNOME (I’m not that influential… yet 😉 ), but anecdata is always nice to help unstick design discussions or just gather insights.

(Polls will follow posts as I can’t share an image and a poll, sadly.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Recent” view in the Files app? Note this is NOT the same as the file chooser, e.g. when opening a file in an app.

(Answer in the following poll.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Recent” view in the Files app? Note this is NOT the same as the file chooser, e.g. when opening a file in an app.

(See previous post for a screenshot, reply for context.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes, frequently
22%
Occasionally
22.7%
Rarely
24%
Never
31.4%
Poll ended at .

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Recent” view in the file chooser, e.g. when opening a file in an app? Note this is NOT the same as when browsing in the Files app.

(Answer in the following poll.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Recent” view in the file chooser, e.g. when opening a file in an app? Note this is NOT the same as when browsing in the Files app.

(See previous post for a screenshot, reply for context.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes, frequently
43.6%
Occasionally
26.8%
Rarely
14.3%
Never
15.3%
Poll ended at .

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Starred” view in the Files app?

(Answer in the following poll.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Starred” view in the Files app?

(See previous post for a screenshot, reply for context.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes, frequently
7.5%
Occasionally
12.9%
Rarely
16%
Never
63.6%
Poll ended at .

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Large Text” option in Settings → Accessibility → Seeing?

Alternatively, do you set a different font scaling factor somewhere else, e.g. in Tweaks?

(Answer in the following poll.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

If you use GNOME, do you use the “Large Text” option in Settings → Accessibility → Seeing?

Alternatively, do you set a different font scaling factor somewhere else, e.g. in Tweaks?

(See previous post for screenshots, reply for context.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes, “Large Text” in Settings
8.9%
Yes, larger font scaling set somewhere else
14.7%
Yes, smaller font scaling set somewhere else
7.3%
No, no change to text/font size
69.1%
Poll ended at .

If you use GNOME, do you use “Focus on Hover” or “focus follows mouse” behavior in GNOME?

(Answer in the following poll.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

If you use GNOME, do you use “Focus on Hover” (also known as “focus follows mouse”) behavior in GNOME?

(See previous post for a screenshot, reply for context.)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes
12.8%
No
79.1%
Not sure
8.1%
Poll ended at .

If you use GNOME, do you use startup/auto-starting apps, e.g. apps that launch when you log in?

(Feel free to reply for context/nuance!)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes, for apps running in the background
41.9%
Yes, for apps that open a window when starting
4.7%
Yes, for a mix of background and windowed apps
18.1%
No
35.3%
Poll ended at .

If you use GNOME, do you use Tweaks for one of these settings, and/or something else?

• Text size/font scaling
• Window focus behavior
• Startup/auto-starting apps

(Sorry this is worded kind of awkwardly… Feel free to reply for context/nuance!)

#GNOMEdesign #GNOME #UX

Yes, ONLY for one or more of the above
10.9%
Yes, for one or more of the above, plus more
39.3%
I use Tweaks, but not for the above
26.1%
No, I don’t use Tweaks
23.8%
Poll ended at .

@cassidy

I imagine a common one a lot of users do is adding back minimise and maximise/restore buttons

Also disabling the "attach modal" setting

@cassidy I used to until mouse acceleration was added to settings
@gnuntoo I love to hear it! You’ll probably notice that we’ve been migrating more and more “tweaks” into Settings proper. These polls are related to ongoing discussions among the design team, and I love hearing feedback like this!
@cassidy You and the team tweak my life for the better, thank you

@cassidy The biggest reason i use tweaks as others have mentioned is to enable the extra window buttons "Minimise and Maximise". However i also use it to change the GTK3 Theme to Adwaita dark (personally i don't know why this isn't changed when going from light to dark in the appearance settings).

Love seeing the ongoing discussions from the Gnome team! Thank you!

@tsoulard @cassidy that's an interesting one - the new "dark mode" switch in settings requires application opt-in.

That's because changing the gtk3 theme out from under applications will make them unusable if they happened to have hardcoded colours in app-specific styles which assumed the default/light theme.

@tsoulard More than anything 'cause the idea is to respect what the apps really support, rather than forcing a theme on them and several ending up half broken

@nahuel That's fair but my understanding that with the default GTK3 themes is they shouldn't cause any issues with theming. As it is "just" a dark theme.

Although i suppose it could cause other issues with app styling i think for me right now my concern is dark mode isn't really "dark mode" in the same way it could be with just a switch to the default GTK3 theme but I'm not aware of the entire picture!

@tsoulard Sure, but then you have programs like MySQL Workbench that make use of GTK 3's foreign drawing to draw parts of their interface "respecting" the user's GTK theme.

After applying any dark theme, you end up with half app in light theme, and half app in dark theme, and even with dark on dark cases

@tsoulard If the app really supports dark mode, let it implement support for the color scheme standard and that's it.
@nahuel ah gotcha that makes way more sense, I knew I was missing something thank you!
@cassidy I also use tweaks to add more information in the top bar clock, and to enable centering new windows by default (I don't think that's the default at least?)
@cassidy i only use it for managing startup apps, but hey i started writing a #libadwaita app to just do only one thing: add, remove and edit startup apps. Considering i am still a beginner, there are a lot of issues where i am unable to know what to do: like how to access app icons outside flatpak sandbox and stuff like that (all the issues i mostly have are related to flatpak sandbox because i would want my app to packaged as flatpak while still having whole functionality)
@hemish hopefully we can move this into Settings in some way that makes sense! I think we’re a little hesitant to add yet-another pane to Settings, but if it’s something people use, it would be good to have one less reason to have to install Tweaks. :)
@cassidy I recall there being some designs around this feature being added to an application setting page under "Apps". Either way, if this gets added, it would be a huge win for novice user's using GNOME.

@cassidy

If I only use it for setting auto starting applications

@cassidy I use it for auto starting apps, modifying top bar date display to include day of week, and setting window close buttons to be on the left side for consistency with macOS which I have to use for work.
@cassidy I have used focus follows mouse since before gnome existed 🙃. I mostly run Ubuntu for desktop systems with gnome, and periodically my focus-follows-mouse breaks on upgrade and I have to go googling to figure out how to get it back. But I don't remember how I did last time 🤷‍♂️