vertical-workspaces VS Gradience

You can try the V-Shell extension which offers a more flexible algorithm that can use all available space and also offers custom grid dimensions and icon sizes. Currently, I recommend installing the latest version from GitHub.

I happily used vanilla GNOME in the past for many years. Unfortunately they've been making some questionable changes recently, and now I need to use extensions to undo those changes... Essential extensions for me are Panel Corners, and either Vertical Overview or V-Shell.

Thanks for the feedback, could you (anyone) test the latest development version from the GitHub repository and let me know what you think? I've made some style changes to the search and app folder views, hopefully for the better...

While searching for a solution discovered the amazing V-Shell extension by GdH: https://github.com/G-dH/vertical-workspaces

My solution are "active folders" with up to 3x3 directly accessible icons without having to open the folder. Available in the V-Shell extension.

V-Shell extension has the option, ignoring all folders. But It also offers active folder previews with up to 9 icons and up to 256px size, that allows better app grouping with direct access to the first 4 or 9 apps from each folder (with adaptive dialog size). You can even open all apps from a folder at once by dragging the folder on the workspace thumbnail. Now the folders finally make sense even to me :)

If you want better control over the Shell UI, try my V-Shell extension, moving the title inside preview was the first thing I changed after switching to GNOME 40+.

Available on GitHub , the final version 24 will be available on e.g.o site soon.

V-Shell. The latest version in the repository allows you to customize the Shell whether you like horizontally or vertically stacked workspaces.

If your main problem with Adwaita are the colors, you can easily customize them, and there are even great GUI tools for this[1]

My issue with Breeze aren't the default colors, but rather the theme itself

[1]: https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience

I really like GTK4 / Adwaita and dislike the look and feel of QT, but I guess that's just personal preference.

You can change the colors of Adwaita using https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience it even has a mode to extract colors from your background like current android versions

Application Theme : adw-gtk-3 with Gradience

This might be an alternative for now - https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience

if the app is using libadwaita you cannot modify the css, you can use gradience to set custom colours though, but it is not the same as modifying the css

For everything else I use the only tool available for properly configuring GNOME: dconf-editor. At this transitional time, managing themes is a challenge, but I like Gradience.

You could also use themix or Gradience

Try https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience/ .

You've tried Nord from Gradience ?