GNOME to Add System Menu to Manage Apps Run in Background

The GNOME desktop is going to add new “Background Apps” to quickly access applications run in background.

It’s a top-right corner system menu (aka Quick Settings) option planned for next GNOME 44. Meaning the next Ubuntu 23.04, Fedora workstation 38, and also Arch Linux will most probably have the option.

Click expand the option will show a list of running applications in background, such as a music player and email client. User should be able to click on app to bring it to foreground, and each app has a cross mark to kill the process.

The option uses xdg-desktop-portal as backend, so it probably designed for sandboxing applications, such as Flatpak and Snap. And,  if the monitoring service is not available, or there are no background apps, then it’s hidden from system menu.

Screenshots in this post and more details about this feature is available at gitlab page.

Hi, I'm Merilyn Ne, a computer geek working on Ubuntu Linux for many years and would like to write useful tips for beginners. Forgive me for language mistakes. I'm not a native speaker of English.