What is Aurora Shell
Aurora Shell is a modular GNOME Shell extension made by the LuminusOS project. It adds the quality-of-life features missing in vanilla GNOME and ships preinstalled on Workstation. Every feature is an independent module you can toggle on its own, and everything is stored in GSettings, so you can configure it from the preferences window or from the command line.
The extension exposes 73 settings keys: 22 module switches plus 51 per-module options. The full reference lives in Settings.
Preferences window
Section titled “Preferences window”Every setting is exposed in the extension preferences: Extensions app →
Aurora Shell → Settings. The window and gsettings write to the same
schema, so you can mix both freely.
The modules
Section titled “The modules”Each module has a module-* boolean key. All modules default to true
except Auto Theme Switcher and Vela VPN Quick Settings.
| Key | Default | Module |
|---|---|---|
module-dock | true | Per-monitor dock with auto-hide, intellihide, and edge reveal |
module-aurora-menu | true | Aurora panel menu with recent items and shortcuts |
module-power-menu-avatar | true | Current user’s avatar and name in the power menu |
module-volume-mixer | true | Per-app volume sliders in Quick Settings |
module-tray-icons | true | System tray with SNI icons and background apps |
module-weather-clock | true | GNOME Weather next to the panel clock |
module-meeting-clock | true | Next calendar event beside the clock, with reminders |
module-clipboard-history | true | Searchable clipboard history with pinning |
module-capture-tools | true | Annotation toolbar and local OCR in the screenshot UI |
module-privacy | true | Screen sharing privacy features |
module-bluetooth-menu | true | Battery levels and animated icons in Bluetooth Quick Settings |
module-lock-key-indicators | true | Caps Lock and Num Lock indicators in the panel |
module-low-battery-percentage | true | Battery percentage in the panel while below 20% |
module-no-overview | true | Skip the overview and boot straight to the desktop |
module-pip-on-top | true | Keep Picture-in-Picture windows always on top |
module-focus-launched-windows | true | Focus new windows instead of window-ready notifications |
module-theme-changer | true | Consistent light/dark color-scheme behavior |
module-auto-theme-switcher | false | Scheduled light/dark theme switching |
module-xwayland-indicator | true | X11 badge on XWayland apps in the Alt+Tab switcher |
module-icon-weave | true | Fix missing app icons automatically, in memory only |
module-app-search-tooltip | true | App name tooltips in overview search results |
module-vela-vpn-quick-settings | false | Route VPN Quick Settings through Vela |
Modules without extra settings
Section titled “Modules without extra settings”These modules only have their module-* switch:
- No Overview (
module-no-overview): skips the overview at startup. - Pip On Top (
module-pip-on-top): keeps Picture-in-Picture windows above everything. - Focus Launched Windows (
module-focus-launched-windows): focuses newly launched windows instead of showing window-ready notifications. - Theme Changer (
module-theme-changer): keeps GNOME’s color scheme in sync. - Power Menu Avatar (
module-power-menu-avatar): shows the current user’s avatar and name in the power menu. - Bluetooth Menu (
module-bluetooth-menu): battery levels and animated icons in Bluetooth Quick Settings. - Low Battery Percentage (
module-low-battery-percentage): battery percentage in the panel while discharging below 20%, without overriding users who already enabled GNOME’s own setting. - Lock Key Indicators (
module-lock-key-indicators): Caps Lock and Num Lock indicators in the panel. - XWayland Indicator (
module-xwayland-indicator): X11 badge on XWayland apps in Alt+Tab. - Icon Weave (
module-icon-weave): matches untracked windows to their apps in memory; writes no files. - App Search Tooltip (
module-app-search-tooltip): app name tooltips in overview search results.
The other eleven modules have their own options, documented in Settings.
Beyond the preferences window
Section titled “Beyond the preferences window”- Developer tool. Setting the
AURORA_DEVTOOLS=1environment variable for the Shell session enables an in-Shell developer tool for inspecting modules. It is meant for Aurora Shell development, not day-to-day configuration. - Live session defaults. On the LuminusOS live and installer session,
the image ships a dconf profile
(
/etc/dconf/db/local.d/00-iso-live-mode) that turns most modules off to keep the installer minimal. Installed systems use the schema defaults documented here.
On other distros
Section titled “On other distros”Aurora Shell works on any distro with GNOME 50 or newer. Install it from extensions.gnome.org.
Privacy
Section titled “Privacy”Everything stays on your machine. No module ever sends data to third parties. Screenshot OCR runs locally through Tesseract; the only network call is the optional web search you trigger yourself from OCR results.
Source
Section titled “Source”Aurora Shell is LGPL-3.0 and developed at github.com/luminusOS/aurora-shell.