How to make your GNOME desktop look like Windows 11 (if that's your jam)

Source: ZDNet

GNOME is a great desktop environment, but many people don’t appreciate its minimal approach. When you sit down at a GNOME desktop for the first time, you might think, “How do I work this crazy thing?” It’s not hard—just different. You can customize GNOME to resemble Windows 11, so if Windows is your jam, read on.

Also: GNOME 50 is a brilliant release – but I had to look twice to see why

All you need for this task is a running, updated instance of GNOME.

How to make GNOME look like Windows 11

Create a directory for user‑installed themes:

mkdir -p ~/.themes

Note: Saving the theme in ~/.themes makes it available only to your user. To share it system‑wide, place it in /usr/share/themes.

Install a Windows 11‑style icon pack

A good option is the pack on Pling. Download it and move the extracted folder to the system icons directory:

sudo mv  /usr/share/icons/

Install GNOME Tweaks

# Ubuntu‑based
sudo apt-get install -y gnome-tweaks

# Fedora‑based
sudo dnf install -y gnome-tweaks

# Arch‑based
sudo pacman -S gnome-tweaks

Open GNOME Tweaks and select the newly added icon pack.

Also: These two Linux desktops are the simplest picks for new users

Install required extensions

1. Dash to Panel – Visit the Dash to Panel page in Firefox and toggle the switch to install.
2. ArcMenu – Install from the ArcMenu page the same way.

Configure everything

Optionally, download the official Windows 11 wallpaper to complete the look.

Install GNOME Extensions app (via Flatpak)

flatpak install -y flathub org.gnome.Extensions

If Flatpak isn’t installed yet:

# Ubuntu‑based
sudo apt-get install -y flatpak

# Fedora‑based
sudo dnf install -y flatpak

# Arch‑based
sudo pacman -S flatpak

Add the Flathub repository (if not already present):

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Restart your system. The GNOME Extensions app now lets you manage and fine‑tune your extensions.

Also: 5 quick tweaks make your GNOME desktop so much easier to use

Customize extensions

Open GNOME Extensions, then adjust Dash to Panel and ArcMenu until they resemble the Windows 11 taskbar and start menu.

Final tweaks in GNOME Tweaks

• Set the Icons and Legacy Applications themes to the ones you installed.
• (Cursor theme changes are not supported here.)

After these steps, your GNOME desktop should look very similar to Windows 11. Congratulations!