GNOME Shell extensions

ID

gext

Link

Repository

Upstream stars

⭐ 179

Last commit

2026-03-11

Version requirement

>= 0.11

Platforms

🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix

Operations

installed · outdated · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove

purl types

pkg:gext/

CLI name

gext

Forced environment

NO_COLOR=1

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: gext

Source

gext.py

Manager of GNOME Shell extensions, from extensions.gnome.org.

Caution

An extension is identified by its UUID (caffeine@patapon.info), which is what the listing reports and what every other operation accepts. The human-readable name printed beside it is decoration and is never a valid argument.

Important

A running GNOME is required, whichever backend is in play. gext talks to GNOME Shell over D-Bus when a session is there and falls back to reading the filesystem otherwise, but even that fallback shells out to gsettings for the enabled-extension list, so a host without GNOME’s schemas fails rather than reporting an empty inventory. mpm leaves the backend choice to gext rather than forcing one, so a desktop session and a plain shell each get the path that works there.

No escalation is ever needed: extensions install under the user’s own data directory.

What mpm adds to gext

Through mpm, gext gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover gext alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your gext commands, in mpm

You already know gext: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With gext	With mpm
List what’s installed	gext list --all	mpm --gext installed
List outdated packages	gext update --dry-run	mpm --gext outdated
Search for a package	gext search caffeine	mpm --gext search caffeine
Install a package	gext install caffeine@patapon.info	mpm install pkg:gext/caffeine@patapon.info
Upgrade one package	gext update --yes caffeine@patapon.info	mpm --gext upgrade caffeine@patapon.info
Upgrade everything	gext update --yes	mpm --gext upgrade --all
Remove a package	gext uninstall caffeine@patapon.info	mpm remove pkg:gext/caffeine@patapon.info

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported	Notes
installed	✅
outdated	✅
orphans
search	✅	Exact and extended search backfilled by mpm.
install	✅
upgrade	✅
upgrade_all	✅
remove	✅
sync	❌	The registry is queried per operation, so there is no index to refresh.
cleanup	❌	The tool ships nothing that prunes, so there is no cache to clear.
doctor

Configuration

• Ignore gext on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-gext option.

• Ignore it for every run in your configuration:

  [mpm]
  gext = false
  

• Raise the timeout of all gext calls:

  [mpm.overrides.gext]
  timeout = 900
  

• Run mpm config-template gext to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

  [mpm.overrides.gext]
  cli_names = [
      "gext",
  ]
  cli_search_path = []
  dry_run = false
  ignore_auto_updates = true
  plan = false
  post_args = []
  pre_args = []
  pre_cmds = []
  requirement = ">=0.11.0"
  stop_on_error = false
  unmaintained = false
  version_cli_options = [
      "--version",
  ]
  version_regexes = [
      "^gext\\s+(?P<version>\\S+)$",
  ]
  
  [mpm.overrides.gext.extra_env]
  NO_COLOR = "1"
  

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every gext call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around gext, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --gext dump gext.toml, then mpm restore gext.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --gext sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations is privileged.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown

State of GNOME Shell extensions’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: extensions.gnome.org

• Retraction: Not documented: the review guidelines govern approval before publication and say nothing about withdrawing an extension afterwards, so what happens to a published extension later found malicious is unrecorded rather than known to be nothing.

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the manager source. If you know GNOME Shell extensions well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ gext list --all
🔵 Dash to Dock ([email protected]) v92 /user
🔵 Version Free ([email protected])  /user
⚪ Caffeine ([email protected]) v58 /user

$ gext update --dry-run
[1] Found extension Caffeine ([email protected]) v60 : outdated
[2] Found extension Dash to Dock ([email protected]) v105 : outdated

📦 Extensions to update:
   [email protected]
   [email protected]

Version check

The version is probed by running:

$ gext --version
gext 0.11.0

and extracted with:

r"^gext\s+(?P<version>\S+)$"

Upstream project

Metrics	essembeh/gnome-extensions-cli
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Changelog

• 8.0.0 (2026-09-20)

  • Add gext, covering the GNOME Shell extensions installed from extensions.gnome.org, the inventory forcing --all so disabled extensions are reported too.