GNOME
GNOME is a fairly adaptive DE, but GNOME Shell and Mutter are not very comfortable to use on a phone because of their lack of touchscreen gestures. However, this is being developed (among other things). Especially Jonas Dreßler has been working on this and whose changes to GNOME Shell/Mutter you can find from his repos (GNOME Shell, Mutter). It's very WIP stuff, so these changes haven't been added to the official GNOME repos yet. During pmbootstrap init you can choose either "gnome" (the official GNOME release) or "gnome-mobile" (same as the previous one, but including whose WIP changes from Dreßler's repos)
GNOME mobile (standard packages since v23.06)
postmarketOS comes with GNOME mobile since v23.06. The user experience is more mature than described in the two sections below. But some quirks remain.
Some unsorted fixes
Scaling
The scaling is sometimes set to 200 %, which will keep Gnome in desktop mode (and not in mobile mode). There are 2 ways to set the display scale:
- Normal way: Change Settings > Display > Scale to 300%.
- Hacky way: Open ~/.config/monitors.xml in editor and set scale to 3 then reboot or relogin
- Hacky way 2: Remove ~/.config/monitors.xml, run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 3 then relogin.
On some devices or on newer versions of gnome there is no 300% scaling option in settings.
Firefox wayland issue
On gnome-mobile Firefox doesn't use wayland for rendering. It causes some issues:
- Scaling issue: Firefox runs in a low-resolution mode and looks ugly.
- Input issue: Firefox doesn't trigger the gnome OSK
Solutions to these issues can be found below: here
GNOME with GNOME Shell/Mutter WIP mobile patches
 Gnome Shell w/ mobile patches running on Oneplus 6 | |
| Name | Gnome Shell Mobile (Experimental) |
|---|---|
| Graphics stack | Mutter |
| Toolkit | Clutter |
| In postmarketOS | |
| Package | postmarketos-ui-gnome-mobile |
| Status | Available |
Gnome Shell/Mutter with mobile patches from fork on https://gitlab.gnome.org/verdre. Currently being upstreamed to the main Gnome Shell/Mutter. Very much WIP. More info: https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/09/09/gnome-shell-on-mobile-an-update/
How to test
- Install with pmbootstrap at https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Installation_guide, selecting `edge`, and selecting `gnome-mobile: (Wayland) Gnome Shell patched to adapt better to phones (Experimental)` under "available user interfaces".
- Download images from the edge channel at https://images.postmarketos.org/bpo/edge/ for devices like the Pinephone Pro or Oneplus 6.
How to file bugs
This is under active development and has many known and unknown bugs. It is packaged here in order to be a development target. Please report the issues to postmarketOS before filing upstream, as at this early stage it is unknown whether potential bugs may be due to packaging or in the code upstream.
See also
- pmaports!3404: initial MR
GNOME without GNOME Shell/Mutter WIP mobile patches
 Gnome Shell without mobile patches running on Redmi 2 | |
| Name | Gnome Shell |
|---|---|
| Graphics stack | Mutter |
| Toolkit | Clutter |
| In postmarketOS | |
| Package | postmarketos-ui-gnome |
| Status | Available |
The stock gnome experience for desktop/laptop.
See also
- pmaports!990: initial MR
- pmaports#94: initial Issue
Extensions
Force phone mode
Warning for gnome-mobile only
This extension forces gnome-mobile to use phone mode. Without it, phone mode will be calculated by screen resolution and scale factor
https://github.com/vixalien/force-phone-mode
Screen auto rotate button
GNOME supports automatic screen rotation, but on a phone it is often useful to switch between manual/automatic rotation on the fly. This adds a button to the system status area.
https://github.com/shyzus/gnome-shell-extension-screen-autorotate
Screen manual rotate button
On phones without support for the gyroscope the following extension adds just a button to manually rotate the screen instead.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/gnumdk/add-rotate-button
Clock to the left
Many phones/mobile devices have a notch that makes it necessary to move the clock on the notification bar to the left side. This extension does just that:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/gnumdk/move-shell-clock/
Flashlight button
Extension adds a button to to turn on the device flashlight in Quick Settings: https://gitlab.com/NekoCWD/nekotorch
See LEDs for more details.
Hide Volume Indicator
This extension removes the useless volume indicator in the top bar:
https://codeberg.org/stephaniebread/gnome-hide-volume-indicator
How to install
- Install with pmbootstrap at https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Installation_guide, selecting `edge`, and selecting `gnome` under "available user interfaces".