A brand new version of the Caffeine GNOME extension is out — and it has a rich, full-bodied roast of improvements.
Older versions of this nifty sleep-inhibitor are a simple toolbar icon that you click on to enable, and click on again to disable.
But the latest version of this deliciously simple tool integrates with the Quick Settings menu in GNOME 43. It adds a new “Caffeine” pod option that, as with other Quick Settings options, you click on to enable/disable.
As before, you see a (full) coffee mug icon in the system tray when Caffeine is active. You can mouse up to the coffee cup icon and scroll on it to instantly turn Caffeine off, without needing to open Quick Settings.
Plus, there’s an option to always show an icon (even when not running). This makes it easy to turn Caffeine on or off without opening the Quick Settings menu.
However, there is a compelling reason to activate it through the Quick Settings menu as there’s a sub-menu with one-click timers for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 30 mins, plus ‘infinite’ (which remains the default selection).
The new version also swaps obtrusive GTK notification toasts for subtler OSD bubbles. These appear in the lower-half of the screen where GNOME shows similar OSDs for volume change, screen brightness, etc:
There’s also a redesigned settings panel that offers an array of advanced configuration options, including:
- Automatically enable Caffeine when using full-screen apps
- How/when to show/hide status icon
- Remember state
- Enable/disable Night Light with Caffeine
- Enable/disable Caffeine using a custom keyboard shortcut
- Display the timer (when set) in the top bar
- Adjust position of Caffeine icon sits in the status tray
- Add apps that automatically trigger Caffeine
In all, a mug-nificent update to an evergreen tool.
You can get Caffeine on GNOME Extensions, though to benefit from most of the changes mentioned in this post you will need to install the latest version (v44) which requires GNOME 43.
