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Is it possible to open Activities and Applications view in Gnome with two .desktop files that I can save in ~/.local/share/applications.

1
  • Obviously, the benefit here is that then you can pin these as favourites on your visible dock. Would be good to add that to your question. In stock Gnome where you do not have a dock on the desktop, this would not make sense because there, you only can access the icons, also these on the dash, from the overview.
    – vanadium
    Jul 2, 2021 at 7:32

2 Answers 2

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for Activities Overview to call from .desktop file, Create a file like callActivitiesView.desktop or any similar name with below content.

[Desktop Entry]
Type = Application
Name = callActivitiesView
Exec = gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell --object-path /org/gnome/Shell --method org.gnome.Shell.Eval string:'Main.overview.toggle();'
Icon = emoji-people-symbolic

Note: for Icon field, you can put any absolute path as you wish or any system icon that is with known name.

for Applications view to call from .desktop file, Create a file like callApplicationsView.desktop or any similar name with below content.

[Desktop Entry]
Type = Application
Name = callApplicationsView
Exec = /usr/local/bin/cAV.sh
Icon = emoji-people-symbolic

and create a script file with executable permission (change the path to file as you wish) with the belwo content

#!/bin/bash

status=`gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell --object-path /org/gnome/Shell --method org.gnome.Shell.Eval 'Main.overview.visible'`

if [ "$status" == "(true, 'false')" ]; then

dbus-send --session --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell.Eval string:'Main.shellDBusService.ShowApplications()'
else
dbus-send --session --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell.Eval string:'Main.overview.hide()'
fi

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0

Alternatively you can open the Application View with Super + A , And Activities View with Super or Super + S

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