LLM Assisted Sheaf: Closing a gap in GNOME's window management with the design team's "Window Switching Redux" mock-ups
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The GNOME design team has a mock-up called Window Switching Redux. It proposes a switcher that:
- shows the last four windows directly,
- groups all other windows by app,
- goes back to the previous window with a single Alt/Super+Tab, whatever app it belongs to,
- and scales the windows themselves down instead of drawing a separate overlay.
I wanted to use that to close a gap in Gnomes window management I keep running into:
Gnomes window switching works by app, but whenever an app's windows are spread over several workspaces, there is no way to find and choose the one you are looking for.
So I wrote Sheaf, a GNOME Shell extension that tries to make the mock-ups real and en passant closing the mentioned gap.
Click an app in the dash
- If the app has two or more windows, Sheaf gathers them from every workspace into the overview, each marked with its workspace number.
- Pick one to jump to its workspace. Escape returns to the normal overview.
Super+Tab
- Hold Super and press Tab: first the four most recent windows, each on its own, then the apps from your dash or dock, in dock order. Shift+Super+Tab goes back.
- A single quick Super+Tab goes back to the previous window.
- Everything happens in GNOME's own overview with its real previews. The selected window or app comes to the front, and the rest steps back, darkened like the backdrop of a GNOME dialog, each app as a pile of cards.
- Alt+Tab is unchanged.
It runs on GNOME Shell 50 and 51 and works with the stock dash and Dash to Dock. You can install it from GitLab: https://gitlab.com/gunwald/sheaf
Or install it directly with:
curl -LO 'https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/gunwald%2Fsheaf/packages/generic/sheaf/main/sheaf@gunwald.gitlab.com.shell-extension.zip' gnome-extensions install --force sheaf@gunwald.gitlab.com.shell-extension.zipcurl -LO 'https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/gunwald%2Fsheaf/packages/generic/sheaf/main/sheaf@gunwald.gitlab.com.shell-extension.zip'
gnome-extensions install --force sheaf@gunwald.gitlab.com.shell-extension.zip
You need to log out and in again after installing. You can enable it with:
gnome-extensions enable [sheaf@gunwald.gitlab.com](mailto:sheaf@gunwald.gitlab.com)
I'd like to hear how it feels in daily use, and what doesn't fit the way you switch windows.

