Your own TV shows, films and games as a library, opened from a button beside Show Apps: posters, synopses, seasons and episodes, in the overview, a pop-up panel, on the desktop or on a workspace of its own. It plays nothing itself: a show or film opens in VLC, mpv or whichever player you choose, and it remembers what you have watched; a game starts through Steam or PCSX2.
- One button, three tabs. TV Shows, Films and Games, switched at the top. Turn a section off and its tab goes. Games are found in Steam's own library files and the folders PCSX2 points at, with nothing to set up.
- Finds the artwork. Each title is looked up on TVmaze, TMDB and Wikipedia for its poster, backdrop, rating and synopsis, and kept in a local cache.
- Remembers what you have watched. Tick an episode, or just play it, and Continue picks up where you left off.
- Looks like GNOME. The grid is the shell's own app grid, in your accent colour, with the same paging, swiping and keyboard.
- Remote or controller. Map a TV remote's keys or a game controller's buttons, and browse from the sofa.
- Four places to open. In the overview, in a pop-up panel, on the desktop, or on a workspace of its own.
The Games tab finds your games by itself, with nothing to set up: Steam's own library files list every installed Steam game, libraries on other drives included, and the folders PCSX2 is pointed at hold your PlayStation 2 discs. On a first run the empty tab has a Find Games button; after that, Rescan on the Games page of the preferences picks up what you installed since.
- Play starts the game the way its launcher would: a Steam game through Steam
(
steam://rungameid/…), with your launch options and compatibility tool; a PS2 disc in PCSX2, full screen. A disc with no PCSX2 found has no Play button. - Show in Files opens the game's install folder or the disc's folder.
- A Steam game's description, genres and artwork come from Steam's own store, keyless. A PS2 disc keeps PCSX2's cover; for its description and a cover PCSX2 lacks, give IGDB a Twitch client id and secret on the Games page.
- Steam and PCSX2 are found in their usual places, the Flatpak installs included; the Games page takes a different folder for either.
The General page of the preferences chooses where the library opens and where a picked item opens. The two settings are separate, so you can mix them.
| The library | A picked item | |
|---|---|---|
| Menu (the default) | In the overview, where the app grid goes | Pops up out of its poster, the way an app folder opens |
| Modal | In a panel over the desktop | In a panel over the desktop, until Escape or a click outside |
| Desktop | On the wallpaper of the workspace you are on | On the wallpaper, in place of the grid when the library is there too |
| Workspaces | On a workspace of its own | On a workspace of its own |
 |
 |
| Menu: a picked show pops up out of its poster. | Modal: the library in a panel. |
 |
 |
| Desktop: the library on the wallpaper. | Desktop: a picked film in place of the grid. |
- GNOME Shell 50.
- A video player. The default command is VLC's; any other command works, and left empty a file opens in your default video app. Watched marks and Continue need a player that shows up in GNOME's media controls (MPRIS): VLC, Showtime, Celluloid, or mpv with mpv-mpris.
- For games, Steam or PCSX2 (either is enough, neither is needed for TV shows and films).
- For game controllers, libmanette, which most desktops already have with WebKitGTK. Without it the extension works and controllers are ignored.
The scanner that reads your folders and finds your games runs on GJS, libsoup 3 and GdkPixbuf, which GNOME Shell itself depends on.
The extension itself never goes online. Only the scanner does, when you press
Rescan in the preferences (or run make scan in a clone), and only for a section
whose Fetch artwork and descriptions online switch is on (on by default).
- Games: a Steam game's app id goes to Steam's store (
store.steampowered.com), keyless, for its description, and its artwork comes from Steam's CDN when the Steam client has not cached it. A PS2 disc's title goes to IGDB (api.igdb.com, after a token fromid.twitch.tv) only once you give it a Twitch client id and secret of your own; without them a PS2 game keeps PCSX2's cover or a drawn placeholder. - What is sent: each show's or film's title, taken from its folder or file name,
and its year where known. TVmaze (
api.tvmaze.com) gets the title; TMDB (api.themoviedb.org) gets the title, the year and your API key; English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) gets the title, the year and "film" or "TV series". Posters and backdrops are then downloaded from the address the source gives (TMDB'simage.tmdb.org, TVmaze's image server, Wikimedia). Nothing about your files beyond the title and year is sent. - Keys are yours. TVmaze and Wikipedia need none. TMDB is skipped until you give it
a free key of your own from your TMDB account.
It is stored in your GNOME settings (dconf) in plain text, like any other
setting, and goes only to TMDB. The key row's Import reads a key from a file you
pick; the file dialog opens on
keys/TMDB/API KEY.txtin your Documents folder if there is one. - What is stored: the library index, artwork and fetched descriptions in
~/.cache/library-menu@jackicus/; watched marks and where playback stopped in~/.local/share/library-menu@jackicus/watched.json. With Keep marks in set to Folders (the default), each library folder also gets a.library-watched.jsonwith its own marks, so another computer reading the same folder sees them; Local removes those copies, Off stops tracking. - What is read: your library folders, Steam's and PCSX2's own files (where games are installed, playtime, PCSX2's game and cover folders), and the media players on your session (over MPRIS) to see which of your files is playing and how far. That stays on your computer.
This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Show data comes from TVmaze and synopses from Wikipedia, both under CC BY-SA; game data from Steam's store and IGDB.com; images keep the licences their sources give them. The artwork is cached for your own library and never published by the extension.
Not on extensions.gnome.org yet. From source, which needs make and
glib-compile-schemas (part of GLib):
git clone https://github.com/Jackicus/GNOME-Library-Menu.git
cd GNOME-Library-Menu
make installLog out and back in (a Wayland session cannot load an extension it has never seen),
then gnome-extensions enable library-menu@jackicus.
TV Shows and Films are empty until they have folders. Open the preferences
(gnome-extensions prefs library-menu@jackicus), and on the TV Shows and Films
pages add your folders and press Rescan. Games need nothing: press Find Games on
the empty Games tab, or Rescan on its page.
- TV Shows: one folder per show. Seasons can be subfolders (
Season 2) orS02E05in the file names. - Films: one folder or file per film, named
Title (Year). The largest video in a folder is the film.
A cover image beside the files (cover.jpg, folder.jpg, poster.jpg and the like)
is used as the poster.
To update, git pull && make install, then log out and back in. To remove,
make uninstall; your cache, watched marks and settings are left as they were.
gnome-extensions prefs library-menu@jackicus, or the Settings button beside the
library on the desktop.
 |
 |
| General: where things open, the button in Dash to Panel's panel (off to begin with), the keyboard shortcut (none to begin with), the grid's size and shape, watched marks, and Rescan everything. | TV Shows and Films: folders, the information sources and their keys, and the player command. |
 |
 |
| Games: where Steam and PCSX2 are, if not where they usually are, and IGDB's keys for PS2 discs. | Controls: remote keys and controller buttons for browsing from the sofa. |
The extension logs to the journal under [Library Menu]:
journalctl -f -o cat /usr/bin/gnome-shell | grep -F '[Library Menu]'The preferences, and the scans they start, log in their own process:
journalctl -f -o cat SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER=org.gnome.Shell.ExtensionsFrom a clone, make status says whether it is installed and running, and make logs
follows both.
- A tab says "Nothing in Films yet". The section has no folder, or has not been scanned: its Open Settings button opens the preferences, where you add a folder on its page and press Rescan.
- Find Games finds nothing. Steam or PCSX2 is installed somewhere other than its usual place: set the folder on the Games page and press Rescan. PCSX2 writes the file that names its disc folders the first time it runs.
- A PS2 game has no Play button. PCSX2 itself was not found (its binary, an
AppImage in
~/Applications, or the Flatpak). - Rescan says "Failed — see logs". The reason is in the preferences' journal above,
after
Scanner failed. - No posters. Check the section's online switch and its sources. TMDB is skipped without a key, and a key TMDB rejects is skipped for the rest of the scan. A title no source had artwork for is not looked up again for a week, unless you add a source.
- Nothing is marked as watched. The player has to show up in GNOME's media controls (mpv needs mpv-mpris), and the file has to be in one of the library's folders.
- A controller does nothing. libmanette is not installed, or the library is not on screen: controllers are read only while it is and no window has the keyboard, except Home, which opens it.
- The preferences take seconds to open. A library folder is on a network share that is offline or has to wake up.
make link # install as a link to src/, for development
make reload # load your edits into the running shell
make check # ESLint, the schema, the scanner's imports: what CI runsCONTRIBUTING.md has the setup and how changes land; try changes in
the nested shell, ./scripts/nested.sh start --stand-in, rather than your own
session. docs/ covers the shell internals it depends
on, compatibility and
publishing.
GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.
The screenshots show a made-up library drawn by scripts/demo_library.py. None of the
shows, films or games are real, and nothing in them was fetched online. Metadata and artwork in
your own library come from TVmaze,
TMDB with your own key, and
Wikipedia; games' from Steam and
IGDB.com with your own Twitch key. VLC is a trademark of
VideoLAN; Steam of Valve; PlayStation of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Library Menu is
not affiliated with any of them.