Adwaita Shell — a GNOME-inspired desktop shell for Windows

A working prototype of a GNOME-style desktop environment rendered as a frameless, fullscreen Electron app on Windows. It recreates the GNOME Shell experience — top bar, Activities overview, app grid, dock, dynamic workspaces, quick settings, and the calendar/notification popover — in the Adwaita visual language.

Native port: a C++ Windhawk mod that runs the same shell inside explorer.exe lives in windhawk/ — no Electron required.

Features

• Top bar — Activities button, focused-app menu, centered clock, and a status area (network / volume / battery).
• Activities overview — search field, live window spread (scaled previews of open windows), and a workspace strip; press Ctrl+Space or click Activities. (The Super key is reserved by Windows.)
• App grid / launcher — nine built-in demo apps plus real programs discovered from the Windows Start Menu (.lnk shortcuts) that launch via the OS.
• Dock — floating Dash-style dock with pinned favorites, running-app dots, launch bounce animation, and hover tooltips. Click focuses, minimizes, or launches.
• Workspaces — dynamic virtual desktops: a + workspace appears when the last one has windows. Switch from the overview strip or with Ctrl+Alt+←/→; move the focused window with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+←/→, or drag a window thumbnail onto a workspace in the overview.
• Quick settings — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Dark Style, and Airplane toggles; volume and brightness sliders (brightness actually dims the wallpaper); battery readout and a power menu (Lock / Suspend / Minimize / Exit).
• Calendar & notifications — click the clock for a real calendar plus a notification tray with Do Not Disturb. Timed banners slide down from the top bar.
• Demo apps — Files, a working fake Terminal (help, neofetch, open files, notify …), Text Editor, a real Calculator, Settings (with a working Dark Style toggle), Web, Photos, Music, and Software — each in a draggable, minimizable, maximizable Adwaita window.
• Light & dark — the Dark Style quick-setting re-skins the whole shell (windows, popovers, dock) live.

Run it

Requires Node.js 20+ on Windows 10/11.

git clone https://github.com/CommunityPokeOrg/gnome-shell-windows
cd gnome-shell-windows
npm install
npm start

The shell opens fullscreen and frameless. Exit it via the status menu → power button → Exit Shell…, or Alt+F4. npm run dist produces an NSIS installer and a portable .exe via electron-builder.

Controls

Action	How
Open/close overview	Ctrl+Space or click Activities
Show app grid	Grid icon in the overview dash, or start typing
Switch workspace	Overview strip, or Ctrl+Alt+←/→
Move window to workspace	Ctrl+Alt+Shift+←/→, or drag its thumbnail
Close overview / popovers	Esc
Minimize / maximize	Titlebar buttons or double-click the titlebar
Quit the shell	Status menu → ⏻ → Exit Shell…

Architecture

main.js            Electron main process: frameless fullscreen window,
                   Start Menu .lnk discovery, app launching, power actions
preload.js         contextBridge: typed shellAPI surface, no nodeIntegration
renderer/
  index.html       Shell DOM skeleton (topbar, dock, overview, popovers)
  styles.css       Adwaita design tokens + every component's styling
  apps.js          Built-in app registry + per-app window content renderers
  app.js           Window manager, workspaces, overview, dock, notifications

The window manager is self-contained in renderer/app.js: windows are absolutely-positioned DOM nodes inside the shell surface with drag, focus, minimize/maximize, and per-workspace membership. The overview renders scaled clones of live window contents, so previews stay current. Real Start Menu apps are read by the main process (fs.readdirSync over the two Programs folders) and launched with shell.openPath, keeping the renderer sandboxed.

Windhawk port

windhawk/ contains a work-in-progress native port of the shell as several focused Windhawk mods (C++, injected into explorer.exe): the top-bar clock, the Activities hot corner/hotkey, dynamic workspaces, and quick-settings routing. See windhawk/README.md.

Roadmap ideas

• Real window thumbnail embedding (host actual HWNDs)
• Shell-integration notifications via WinRT toast APIs
• Persisted settings, custom wallpapers, multi-monitor support