[Release Candidate] Tiling Shell v18.0 | GNOME 50 support, right mouse button as activation key, keybinding to untile all the windows, bug fixes and more

[domferr]

Release Strategy Update

Starting with Tiling Shell v18.0, the release strategy is changing! Tiling Shell has grown significantly over the years. It now supports GNOME 42 through GNOME 50, and every release requires extensive testing across multiple GNOME versions, desktop configurations, and features.

As a solo maintainer, thoroughly testing every feature has become increasingly time-consuming. Some features are also difficult for me to test directly because they require specific hardware or setups (for example, drawing tablet support).

From now on, new versions will first be published on GitHub as release candidates when they are considered feature-complete and nearly production-ready. This allows interested users to try new features earlier and provide feedback. Once the release has been validated by the community, it will be published on extensions.gnome.org.

Thank you to everyone who tests pre-releases and reports issues. Your feedback helps make Tiling Shell better for everyone!

How you can help

Testing is useful even when you don't find any issues. If you try a release candidate, please leave feedback and tell me:

• Your GNOME version
• Your distribution
• Whether everything worked as expected
• Any special setup worth to share (multiple monitors, drawing tablets, touchscreens, etc.)

A simple "Tested on GNOME 48 + Fedora 42, everything works fine" is extremely valuable because it helps confirm the release is ready for publication on extensions.gnome.org.

Release notes | Comment to share your testing results!

The release will be published after enough successful test reports across supported GNOME versions.

• new: added support for Right Mouse Button as activation key. This was one of the most requested feature, mainly because PowerToys from Windows does it and people love it. GNOME gave some technical challenges, but thanks to egme those were solved
• new: updated 🇮🇹 translation. Thanks albanobattistella
• new: updated 🇵🇱 translation. Thanks alewicki95
• new: updated 🇩🇪 translation. Thanks ChrisLauinger77
• new: added support to GNOME 50. Closes GNOME 50 support #501 (This was already published when GNOME 50 came out, we are just including it in this release notes for the records 😃 )
• new: added keybinding to untile all the windows. Thanks RemyL
• new: added setting to allow changing the layouts of all the workspaces when selecting a layout in one workspace. Disabled by default, keeping the current behaviour. Thanks thameem-abbas
• new: Tiling Shell has a setting, normally disabled, to allow raising all the windows together when raising only one. In this update we are adding a second option to limit this raise-together behaviour to current display. Thanks timheide.
• fix: the Super key, when chosen as activation key, was no longer triggering tiling mode when dragging windows. Closes Super key activation broken in v17.3 #485. Thanks liuxiaopai-ai
• fix: disconnect some signals with the right ordering. Thanks brenjn
• fix: alt-tab race condition and signal handler leak. Thanks toabctl

Manual installation

There are two builds and you need only one of them, according to your GNOME Shell version:

• For GNOME Shell versions 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 and 50: tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com.zip
• For GNOME Shell versions from 42, 43 and 44: GNOME.42-44.tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com.zip

To know your GNOME Shell version, run gnome-shell --version.

Extract the downloaded archive. Copy its content to ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com directory. You need to reload GNOME Shell afterwards (e.g. by logging out). Then you can enable the extension:

/usr/bin/gnome-extensions enable tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com

[domferr]

Release Candidate 1:

• For GNOME Shell versions from 42, 43 and 44: GNOME.42-44.tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com.zip
• For GNOME Shell versions 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 and 50: tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com.zip

[PHLAK]

Just installed RC1 on GNOME 50 (Arch Linux). Everything appears to be working, however the Snap Assistant is huge. I am running at 200% scaling.

Screencast.From.2026-06-26.11-27-52.mp4

[domferr]

Hi @PHLAK thanks for testing! Could you share if you have fractional scaling active, what is the current scaling and if you had this issue before v18.0 in GNOME 50? Thank you!

[PHLAK]

Could you share if you have fractional scaling active, what is the current scaling and if you had this issue before v18.0 in GNOME 50?

No, I'm not using fractional scaling. This was working fine in GNOME 49.

Also, FYI, there's already an open issue for this: #541

[0rangePanda1]

Version: Gnome 50.2
Distribution: CachyOS

First time manually installing an extension, so not sure if it's user error or not.

Created the directory:
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com

Downloaded and unzipped the archive:
unzip ~/Downloads/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com.zip -d ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com

Logged out completely, logged back in, enabled the extension, and got this error:

The settings of extension tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com had an error:

GLib.FileError: Failed to open file “/home/straw/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com/schemas/gschemas.compiled”: open() failed: No such file or directory

Stack trace:
  getSettings@resource:///org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/js/extensions/sharedInternals.js:101:53
  fillPreferencesWindow@file:///home/straw/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com/prefs.js:55:30
  _loadPrefs@resource:///org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/js/extensionPrefsDialog.js:43:24
  async*ExtensionPrefsDialog@resource:///org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/js/extensionPrefsDialog.js:28:14
  OpenExtensionPrefsAsync@resource:///org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/js/extensionsService.js:138:33
  async*LaunchExtensionPrefsAsync@resource:///org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/js/extensionsService.js:125:14
  _handleMethodCall@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/Gio.js:407:31
  _wrapJSObject/<@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/Gio.js:448:34
  _init/GLib.MainLoop.prototype.runAsync/</<@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/GLib.js:264:34
  

I checked the directory myself and couldn't find 'gschemas.compiled'.
I retried this about 5 times, same issue.

Edit:
After many retries, it worked somehow.
Don't know what I did differently

[zenofile]

GLib.FileError: Failed to open file “/home/straw/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com/schemas/gschemas.compiled”: open() failed: No such file or directory

I encountered this as well. Manually compiling the schema made it load fine, though:

glib-compile-schemas ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com/schemas/

[cavcrosby]

GNOME version: 48.7
Distribution: Debian 13

Aside from having to compile the extension schema, things worked as expected. The setup I tested on has multiple monitors.

[rombert]

Looks good here on GNOME 50 and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Only did some light testing for a couple of hours.

[leetNightshade]

Please tell me this also supports Right Click deactivation key? I use None on activation so it'll always autotile, and on Windows with PowerTools I use right click to stop tiling, and it's veryy niice. 🙏 🥺

Right now Right Click (without it being configured as deactivation key) cancels the drag and still allows auto-tile to complete where the window is closest; I suspect from the context menu trying to open (but idk).

[robsonalvesdevbr]

Fix for TileShell Not Starting on Ubuntu 26.04

---

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=26.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=resolute
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 26.04 LTS"

robson@vaiodefault:~
$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
wayland

$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 50.1

---

On Ubuntu 26.04, TileShell may fail to start because the extension is not being enabled with the following command:

/usr/bin/gnome-extensions enable tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com

The solution that worked for me was:

1. Install the extension

Install TileShell 18.0-candidate (or the latest stable release) into:

~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/

2. Check whether user extensions are globally disabled

If this setting is true, no user extensions will be loaded, so the enable command will appear to have no effect.

Check the current value:

gsettings get org.gnome.shell disable-user-extensions

If it returns true, enable user extensions again:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-user-extensions false

3. Enable the extension

/usr/bin/gnome-extensions enable tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com

4. Compile the GSettings schemas

glib-compile-schemas ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com/schemas/

5. Restart your user session

Log out and log back in to reload GNOME Shell and activate the extension.