Fedora is the distro that has never let me down. I’ve taken advantage of the robustness of a distro focused on developers and cutting-edge technology; I’ve adapted and adopted its philosophy into my workflow as an everyday user. I don’t waste time customizing. GNOME has made me productive and kept things simple with its approach and focus... After four years without Windows and the disaster that was version 11—which had barely been released—I saw what a mess it was and decided to switch. I’ve never had Windows, and my new laptops always come with Fedora installed.

Spotify Controller

Premium UI & Glassmorphism Design

A visual experience unlike any other GNOME extension.

• Translucent Glass Look - The popup, buttons, and lists all feature a sleek glassmorphic effect that adapts beautifully to light and dark wallpapers
• Dynamic Ambient Background - Dominant colors are extracted from the current track's cover art and applied as a live gradient across the popup
• Spinning Cover Art - Album art rotates like a vinyl record while music plays; speed and radius are fully adjustable in settings
• Polished Hover Effects - Every button and list item has smooth, custom hover states - Red on "Play All", Vibrant Purple on "Shuffle", Soft Red on the Heart icon

Advanced Multi Playlist Manager

A complete playlist system, built right into the extension.

• Custom Playlists - Create unlimited playlists, rename them on the fly with the edit icon, and delete them anytime
• Quick Add - Save the currently playing song to any playlist instantly with the + button on the main player page
• Smart Search - A search bar automatically appears once a list grows beyond 5 items, so you can filter fast
• Track Intelligence - Each playlist automatically displays its song count and total playback time (e.g., 5 songs • 19 min)

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Liked Songs System

Your favorites, always one tap away.

• In-Player Heart Button - A dedicated Heart icon next to the playback slider saves the current track to Liked Songs with a single click; the icon glows with a glassy soft-red color when active
• Dedicated Liked Songs Page - A separate section collects all your favorite tracks in one easy-to-access list

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Smart Playback & Queue Control

Full control over what plays and when.

• Direct Play - Clicking any song in a playlist or Liked Songs instantly triggers playback in Spotify
• Play All & Shuffle - Every playlist has dedicated action buttons at the top to play in order or at random
• Full Media Controls - Play, Pause, Next, Previous, and Repeat, all wired up and ready
• Smooth Seek Slider - A buttery-smooth progress slider lets you seek precisely through any track

Real-Time Synchronized Lyrics

One click to sing along.

• One-Click Overlay - Tap the cover art to instantly transition to a synchronized lyrics view; tap again to return
• Auto-Scroll - Lyrics scroll automatically in sync with the track's current timestamp - no manual interaction needed

Smart Backend & Optimization

Fast, lean, and built to last.

• Offline Data - All custom playlists and liked songs are saved locally in a spotify-playlist.json file - no cloud dependency
• Image Caching - Cover art is cached to a .cache folder after the first download, saving bandwidth and reducing RAM usage on every subsequent play
• Auto Garbage Collector - Old, unused cached images are silently purged over time, keeping your storage clean

Deep Customization

Open the Spotify Controller preferences to fine tune everything

• Customize fonts, font sizes, and text colors
• Adjust button spacing, margins, and icon sizes
• Toggle the vinyl rotation animation for cover art
• Choose between Wavy or Straight progress slider styles with custom thickness, speed, and colors
• Reposition the panel widget to the Left, Center, or Right side
• Show or hide individual panel buttons independently

Couldn’t quite find a Linux / GNOME photo gallery app that matched what I wanted, so I started building my own in Rust + GTK4/libadwaita.

Current prototype already has:

• simple GNOME-style 3-pane UI
• auto-populated image folders from Pictures / Downloads
• filmstrip thumbnails with background caching
• fast image preview
• zoom support (still improving)
• clean dark GNOME look

Still early, but it’s already usable and I’m pretty happy with the progress so far. Next steps are smoother zoom + pan, better folder discovery, duplicate finding, metadata tools, and eventually built-in image upscaling.

Advanced Media Controller — beta with PlayerTabs UI (app pinning), rotating vinyl art, slider sync, GNOME 40–50

Been reworking a lot of the internals lately and pushed a beta branch with the current state. This one focuses more on stability and making things behave properly across setups, along with a refreshed PlayerTabs UI.

what’s new

• PlayerTabs UI (with app pinning)
  updated tab layout with support for pinning your preferred players. makes switching faster if you usually stick to the same apps. switching logic itself is also more reliable now across flatpak, snap, appimage, etc.

• rotating vinyl album art
  album covers now render like a vinyl disc and rotate with playback. simple effect, but fits nicely without being distracting.

• progress slider tweaks
  better sync with playback, smoother updates. no more random jumps or lagging behind.

compatibility

• GNOME 40 → 50 supported

kept support for older GNOME versions (40–48) on purpose. a lot of distros like debian or zorin are still on those, so dropping support there didn’t feel right. trying to keep it usable across both older and newer shells.

• tested on mixed setups, not just one environment

fixes

• fixed memory leaks (mostly signal handling + cleanup issues)
• improved player detection reliability
• cleaned up parts of the code to align better with GNOME extension guidelines
• small performance improvements overall

links

• stable: https://github.com/Sanjai-Shaarugesh/Advanced-media-controller
• beta: https://github.com/Sanjai-Shaarugesh/Advanced-media-controller/tree/beta
• extension page: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/9184/advanced-media-controller/

note

this is still beta, so expect some rough edges depending on your setup. if something breaks or behaves weirdly with a specific player, logs or details would help a lot.

if you’ve been using it already, this build should feel more stable and a bit more predictable overall.

I have to search for it in the search bar for its icon to show, and the icon can't be added to the dock.

I use the screenshot app a lot, so having to search for it every time is tedious. Other apps appear in the drawer, and can be added to the dock.

I'm using Debian 13, if that matters in any way.

Thanks in advance.

where do i even begin? help!