After the year of development of Published Release of the Custom Shell Material Shell 42 , offering realization of the concepts of mosaic and spatial layout of windows for GNOME. The project is decorated in the form of expansion for GNOME Shell and aims to simplify navigation and improving the efficiency of working with automation with windows and predictability of the interface behavior. The code is written in TypeScript and extends under the GPLV3 license. In the release of Material Shell 42, support is provided over GNOME 42.
In Material Shell, a spatial model (Spatial Model) of switching between windows, implies the separation of open applications to the workspaces (Workspace). Each workspace may contain several applications. Thus, a virtual grid is formed from the application windows, the columns in which are applications, and strings – workspace. The user can switch the visibility area by moving on the grid relative to the current cell, for example, you can move the visible area to the left or right to switch between applications in one workspace, as well as up or down to switch between work areas.
Material Shell allows you to group applications depending on the subject or tasks performed through the addition of new workspaces and the opening of applications in them, forming a convenient user and predictable space of windows. All windows are composed in mosaic form (tiled) and do not overlap. It is possible to disclose the current application to the full screen, out side by side with other applications from the workspace, mapping all windows in the form of columns or grid, as well as windows binding windows in arbitrary form using horizontal and vertical bond with adjacent windows.
User-configured Spatial model is saved between restarts, which allows you to form a familiar environment with a user-selected fixing elements. When you start the application, its window is placed in the place previously selected for it, while maintaining the overall procedure for the work areas and binding applications to them. To navigate, you can view the module of the generated grid in which all previously started applications are shown on the user selected locations and click on the application icon in this grid will lead to the opening of the desired application in its place in the spatial model.
Keyboard, touch screen or mouse can be used to control. Interface elements are decorated in the style of Material Design