Media Progress For Linux

The GNOME Shell extension ecosystem plays a big role in why GNOME is currently one of the most popular desktop environments in the Linux world. GNOME Shell extensions range from "meh" or niche to full-on "wow, it's got everything."

Media Progress is a GNOME Shell extension that can be considered pretty niche. What does it do? It adds a media real-time progress bar to the GNOME Shell Notification section.

While not particularly impressive and grandest in scope, Media Progress is one of those "Why-is-this-not-a-default-GNOME-feature?" types of Shell extensions.

Media Progress adds a progress bar to the GNOME Shell media control (in the Notification area). The most obvious question probably is - does it do anything more than just that?

The answer is: yes, but not much. The progress bar added by the extension is in fact a bit more than just a visual indicator. The progress bar is interactive and "seekable." This means that the extension does offer you a bit of control over your media, as it allows you to jump to any specific position of the currently playing media.

Last but not least, I have to point out that I really like the idea behind this small extension, but it does need a bit more work since it's not totally stable. On various occasions, the extension stopped working altogether. I managed to fix it with a quick start and stop from the Extension Manager app, which I highly recommend.

If you're interested in the project, you can check out the extension's GitHub repository. As with most open-source projects, you can take a more active role by finding and submitting bugs.