GNOME has a long standing UX issue regarding choosing the audio output device when multiple audio devices (usually PulseAudio ALSA sinks) are available. In the default GNOME desktop (until v43) the user needs to navigate all the way to Settings->Sound and fiddle with drop-down dialogues to make this choice.
Some options to make this more convenient are available.
GNOME 43 adds a new Quick Settings feature which allows, amongst others, the audio device to be chosen directly from the “top bar”‘s “system menu” UI in the upper right corner.
The exact appearance and features exposed in the Quick Settings can be modified by installing the “Quick Setting Tweaker” GNOME Shell extension (GPL-3.0/MIT license).
GNOME 43 is present in Debian based distributions since Debian 12 (bookwoorm, 2023-07) & Ubuntu 23.04 (lunar). Note that after v3.38 a new GNOME versioning scheme was introduced meaning that the following release became v40.
The Volume Mixer GNOME Shell extension (GPL-2.0 license) makes the sound output selection available from the top bar’s system menu in a nice an uncluttered way, hiding unnecessary distractions (fx. no input selection when no application is recording).
Similarly the Sound Input & Output Device Chooser GNOME Shell extension (GPL-3.0 license) also makes the selection available in the system menu. However, the UI is slightly more convoluted with the width of the dialogue expanding dynamically making the UX a bit unintuitive and jumpy.
If you use multiple desktops or just prefer a non-GNOME specific solution another way is to install the Ubuntu AppIndicator compatible “Sound Switcher Indicator” (GPL-3.0 license) in combination with the GNOME Shell extension “AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support” (GPL-2.0 license), which will make Ubuntu AppIndicators appear as tray icons in the GNOME top bar.
The support and non-support of tray icons, requiring the use of extensions like the above, has been a long standing discussion in the GNOME community since the GNOME3 redesign work decided that no existing systray/indicator/status icon protocol was adequate for the GNOME UI requirement.
Curiously the Ubuntu AppIndicator standard is a remnant of Canonical’s attempted desktop/mobile convergence environment Ubuntu Unity (distributed in parallel on mobile OS Ubuntu Touch and standard Ubuntu desksop). This has now been abandoned by Canonical/Ubuntu but still lives somewhat on in the community; see ubuntu-touch.io & ubuntuunity.org.
EDIT 2023-09-20: add screenshots minor text corrections
While once again being annoyed by the obnoxious way modern GNOME handles in-application dialogues (fx. Nautilus’ Properties dialog) as modal (ie. freezes the parent window) AND even prevents movement of the dialogue relative to the parent I did some searching which revealed a partly solution!
This was also complained about in a 2017 LibreOffice bug report which concluded that the immobility is a GNOME 3 desktop default behaviour caused by the setting attach-modal-dialogs.
Details in the related GNOME bug report shows how to disable this by modifying gsettings;
In a regular upstream GNOME session, `gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides attach-modal-dialogs false`, a schema of ‘org.gnome.shell.extensions.classic-overrides’ for the classic session and afaik ‘org.gnome.mutter’ for a Ubuntu-patched GNOME.
Now knowing which term to search for, lots of discussion about this shows up (including posts similar to this), the best write up of the mitigation is probably this askubuntu question. And the mother opinionated Ubuntu bug report is this where Ubuntu officially states;
We do not consider Gnome’s defaults in this area unreasonable.
But the reason for this behaviour? Seems to be unknown as even this 2018 bug report on gnome-shell hasn’t received any official answer or comment about why this would be a sane default. Go figure…
TLDR;On Ubuntu 20.04 and similar distributions turn off GNOME’s attach-modal-dialogs feature by doing;
$ gsettings set org.gnome.mutter attach-modal-dialogs false
Or if you like the mouse; install & launch gnome–tweaks and click “Windows” -> “Attach Modal Dialogues”;
Oh, and remember to read the Nielsen Norman Group article “Modal & Nonmodal Dialogs: When (& When Not) to Use Them” (summary: Modal dialogs interrupt users and demand an action. They are appropriate when user’s attention needs to be directed toward important information).
Edit:2023-07-30: add gnome-tweaks approach
This post will detail some stuff I’ve done to a plain Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop (bionic) to make me feel a little more at home in the transition from my daily driver for years the 16.04 release using Canoncial’s Unity as the primary desktop interface to the GNOME Shell of 18.04. Canonical abandoned the former after shifting focus from the convergence and personal device market to cloud and IoT in 2017 leaving development of its mobile OS, Ubuntu Touch which Unity is a part of, to the community formed UBports project (Unity8 is now known as Lomiri). I’ve been putting off this transition exactly because I knew it would require me to make some tweaks to my daily routines, but this system is not one I use on a daily basis so it will make the transition a gentle ride.
The intention is to update this as the experience progresses.
EDIT 2021-08-25: clean up and publish dormant draft post
To be able to install GNOME Extensions directly from a browser while perusing the directory at extensions.gnome.org, add the GNOME Shell Integration extension/add-on to your browser (Firefox add-on, Chrome Web Store), then install the Integration extension in GNOME to communicate with the browser extension:
sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell
After this you can go to extensions.gnome.org/local/ to see, configure and update installed extensions.
GNOME includes a nice Clock application which is available in the package repository but not installed by default;
sudo apt install gnome-clocks
Installing the Alarm Clock extension described above, will also show the application’s alarms in the notification area.
I like both the date and seconds to be displayed in the head of the desktop, so to format the text a couple of extensions are available;
Will investigate later and amend the post (promise!).
$ free; find . -size +25M -exec bash -c 'ls -l {}; eog {}; echo' \;; free total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7746692 5767656 843228 317764 1135808 1271048 Swap: 7950332 5113012 2837320 -rw-rw-r-- 1 miki miki 39926496 Jun 10 19:25 ./20190609_184124.jpg ** (eog:23320): CRITICAL **: eog_reload_plugin_activate: assertion 'G_IS_MENU (model)' failed eog: ../../../../src/cairo-xlib-surface-shm.c:619: _cairo_xlib_shm_pool_create: Assertion `*ptr != ((void *)0)' failed. bash: line 1: 23320 Aborted (core dumped) eog ./20190609_184124.jpg -rw-rw-r-- 1 miki miki 38286099 Jun 10 19:26 ./20190609_183714.jpg ** (eog:23332): CRITICAL **: eog_reload_plugin_activate: assertion 'G_IS_MENU (model)' failed eog: ../../../../src/cairo-xlib-surface-shm.c:619: _cairo_xlib_shm_pool_create: Assertion `*ptr != ((void *)0)' failed. bash: line 1: 23332 Aborted (core dumped) eog ./20190609_183714.jpg -rw-rw-r-- 1 miki miki 36181801 Jun 9 17:13 ./20190609_160437.jpg ** (eog:23343): CRITICAL **: eog_reload_plugin_activate: assertion 'G_IS_MENU (model)' failed ** (eog:23343): CRITICAL **: eog_reload_plugin_deactivate: assertion 'G_IS_MENU (menu)' failed -rw-rw-r-- 1 miki miki 39059177 Jun 10 19:25 ./20190609_184146.jpg ** (eog:23354): CRITICAL **: eog_reload_plugin_activate: assertion 'G_IS_MENU (model)' failed eog: ../../../../src/cairo-xlib-surface-shm.c:619: _cairo_xlib_shm_pool_create: Assertion `*ptr != ((void *)0)' failed. bash: line 1: 23354 Aborted (core dumped) eog ./20190609_184146.jpg total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7746692 5773448 495604 659944 1477640 922956 Swap: 7950332 5112700 2837632 $
