Rectangle-style window snapping for GNOME Shell 46–48 (Wayland and X11): keyboard actions with repeated-press size cycling, extended drag snap zones with live preview, pair tiling, footprint splitting, and a top-bar menu of every action.
Status: 0.1.0 public beta. The pure geometry core is heavily unit-tested; GNOME 46/47/48 runtime validation is in progress (see the compatibility table). Feedback and bug reports are very welcome.
Every snap action is one click away in the top bar, each showing the shortcut it is currently bound to:
- 17 snap actions on global shortcuts: halves, quarters, thirds, maximize, almost-maximize (90 %), center, restore, move to next/previous display
- Repeated presses cycle sizes: ½ → ⅔ → ⅓ (halves), ¼ → ⅙ (quarters)
- Restore returns a window to where it was before its current snap chain began (session-original; re-maximizes if it was maximized)
- Outer and inner gaps, applied consistently to every snap
- Drag snap zones beyond GNOME's built-ins: edge bands for halves and quarters, bottom-edge thirds, corner hot zones — with a live translucent preview, and two-thirds/sixth variants while holding the modifier
- Pair tiling: drop a window onto the middle of another window to tile the two side by side (modifier → ⅔ / ⅓ split)
- Footprint splitting: drop onto a window that is already snapped to a half/quarter/third and the two windows split that region instead — a half becomes stacked quarters; splits recurse
- Top-bar indicator: a Rectangle-style menu of every snap action with its current shortcut, plus quick access to preferences; hideable in settings
- GTK4/Adwaita preferences: rebindable shortcuts with conflict warnings, gaps, cycling toggle, drag/pair modes
| Wayland | X11 | |
|---|---|---|
| GNOME 46 | validation in progress | validation in progress |
| GNOME 47 | not yet validated (experimental) | not yet validated (experimental) |
| GNOME 48 | not yet validated (experimental) | not yet validated (experimental) |
| GNOME 49 | not yet validated (experimental) | not yet validated (experimental) |
| GNOME 50 | not yet validated (experimental) | not yet validated (experimental) |
Dated results land here as the release-candidate matrix is executed.
From a packaged release (recommended):
- Download
untangler@bluvulture.shell-extension.zip(and its.sha256) from the releases page; optionally verify:sha256sum -c untangler@bluvulture.shell-extension.zip.sha256 gnome-extensions install untangler@bluvulture.shell-extension.zip- Reload GNOME Shell: log out and back in (Wayland) or press Alt+F2, type
r, Enter (X11) gnome-extensions enable untangler@bluvulture
Preferences: gnome-extensions prefs untangler@bluvulture (or via the
Extensions app).
Update: gnome-extensions install --force untangler@bluvulture.shell-extension.zip, then reload the shell. Uninstall: gnome-extensions uninstall untangler@bluvulture.
| Action | Shortcut | Cycles |
|---|---|---|
| Left / Right half | Super+Alt+← / → | ½ → ⅔ → ⅓ |
| Top / Bottom half | Super+Alt+↑ / ↓ | ½ → ⅔ → ⅓ |
| Quarters (TL/TR/BL/BR) | Super+Alt+U / I / J / K | ¼ → ⅙ |
| Thirds (first/center/last) | Super+Alt+D / F / G | — |
| Maximize | Super+Alt+Return | — |
| Almost maximize (90 %) | Super+Alt+M | — |
| Center (no resize) | Super+Alt+C | — |
| Restore | Super+Alt+BackSpace | — |
| Next / previous display | Super+Alt+PageDown / PageUp | — |
All rebindable in Preferences; rows warn when a shortcut collides with common GNOME system shortcuts (window-manager and Mutter keybindings) or another Untangler action (conflicts with other extensions cannot be detected — best effort only).
| Key | Type / default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
outer-gap |
int, 0 (0–128) | Pixels between snapped windows and the work-area edge |
inner-gap |
int, 0 (0–128) | Pixels between adjacent snapped windows |
cycle-sizes-enabled |
bool, true | Repeated presses cycle size variants |
drag-snap-mode |
off | replace | modifier, default replace |
Drag zones: off / replace GNOME's edge tiling / only while the modifier is held |
drag-snap-modifier |
ctrl | alt | shift | super, default ctrl |
The variant/activation modifier |
pair-tile-mode |
off | modifier | always, default always |
Pair-tile when dropping a window onto another |
edge-band-px |
int, 16 (4–64) | Zone trigger depth from screen edges |
show-preview |
bool, true | Translucent preview of the drop target |
saved-edge-tiling, edge-tiling-suppressed |
internal | Crash-safe bookkeeping for Replace mode — don't edit |
Gaps too large for the monitor are clamped automatically; Untangler never places a window smaller than 16 px per side.
| Drag snapping | Pair tiling | Zones trigger… | Pair triggers… | Modifier means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off | any | never | never | — |
| Replace | Always | always | pointer over a window's center | variant sizes (⅔/⅓, sixths) |
| Replace | With modifier | always | only while modifier held | pair activation; zones still get variant sizes |
| Replace | Off | always | never | variant sizes (zones only) |
| Modifier-only | any | only while modifier held | only while modifier held (never if pair tiling is Off) | activation (no variants) |
Restore is session-original: it returns the window to its geometry from before Untangler's current placement chain began — through any number of cycling presses, zone drops, pair tiles, or monitor moves — and re-maximizes it if it was maximized. Manually moving, resizing, or unmaximizing a window re-baselines it: the next Untangler action starts a fresh chain from the manual position.
- Replace mode changes a global GNOME setting (
org.gnome.mutter edge-tiling) while enabled and restores it on disable. It checks writability, keeps crash-safe backups, and if anything else re-enables native tiling, Untangler logsadoptingand stops claiming the setting. Manual recovery, should you ever need it:gsettings reset org.gnome.mutter edge-tiling - Esc-cancel is a heuristic (Mutter exposes no cancel flag): a drop that lands exactly at the window's pre-drag position reads as a cancel, and a cancelled drag that Mutter restores late could in principle read as a drop. In practice both are rare.
- The top screen edge outside its center 50 % deliberately has no drop target.
- Apps with large minimum sizes can't shrink below them: the window is re-centered inside the target zone instead.
- A resizable window that cannot maximize still shows a maximize-zone preview; the drop does nothing.
- Odd footprint fragments (e.g. the ⅔ piece of an already-split half) are recognized as splittable only until the shell restarts.
journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell -b 0 --no-pager | grep -i untangler
Untangler logs only on failure paths, always prefixed Untangler: —
placement refusals (refusing sub-minimum …), pair-drop aborts/rollbacks,
edge-tiling suppression problems (… not writable, failed to suppress,
re-enabled externally; adopting), and lifecycle errors (enable failed,
teardown step failed). Include that output in bug reports, plus the
diagnostics the issue template asks for.
npm run verify # tests + checks + byte-verified reproducible packaging
npm run package # release zip + SHA-256 + commit provenance
./scripts/install.sh # DEVELOPMENT install: symlinks this working treeThe dev installer replaces ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/untangler@bluvulture
(it refuses real installs unless you pass --force) — normal users should
install the packaged zip instead. After code changes, reload the shell
(ESM is cached per process).
More: Architecture · Contributing · Manual test matrix
GPL-2.0-or-later — see LICENSE. Security policy: SECURITY.md · Support: SUPPORT.md