Compact Launcher brings a clean, floating app grid to your GNOME desktop. Find any installed application instantly — no typing required.
Designed to feel like a natural part of GNOME — fast, minimal, and always out of the way until you need it.
A single button in the dock opens a floating grid with every installed application, sorted alphabetically and ready to launch.
No search bar cluttering the interface. Just scroll through the grid and click the icon you want. Simple and distraction-free.
Arrow keys move focus across the grid, Enter launches the selected app, and Esc closes the popup — all without touching the mouse.
The launcher button appears on every connected monitor's dock and the popup opens on whichever monitor your cursor is on.
Adjust icon size, tile dimensions, popup size, grid spacing, position anchoring, column count, animation speed, and more — all through a polished settings window.
Filter out apps you never use by exact name or wildcard pattern. Type Libre* to hide the entire LibreOffice suite in one rule.
Background, text, and highlight colours all come from your active GNOME theme — light, dark, or anything in between. No hardcoded colours.
Built entirely with GNOME Shell and GJS APIs. No X11 hacks — runs cleanly on both Wayland and X11 sessions.
Applications are loaded once and cached. The grid renders instantly — even with 200+ apps installed — with smooth 60 fps animations.
A clean preferences window — organised into three tabs — lets you customise every aspect of the launcher without editing a single file.
Set icon size, tile width and height, grid spacing, dock button position, and animation duration.
Define the popup size in pixels, anchor it relative to the dock, and control minimum and maximum column counts.
Add exact names or wildcard patterns to permanently hide apps from the grid. Remove them at any time with one click.
Clone the repository and run the install script — it handles everything automatically.
The install script copies all files, compiles the GSettings schema, and enables the extension.
# Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/gilson-fonsaca/compact-launcher.git cd compact_launcher # Run the installer bash install.sh
After installation, log out and log back in so GNOME Shell fully loads the extension.
Make sure these are in place before installing:
GNOME Shell 47 / 48 / 49 Ubuntu Dock or Dash to Dock glib-compile-schemas (libglib2.0-bin) Wayland or X11 session
To uninstall, run bash uninstall.sh — it cleans up all files and saved preferences.
Compact Launcher is free and open source, built and maintained in spare time. If it has made your GNOME desktop a little better, consider buying me a coffee — it helps keep the project alive and motivates future improvements.
No account needed · Secure payment via Buy Me a Coffee