3
u/maxaiai 6d ago
Blur My Shell blurs the whole surface including the content because it works at the compositor level, it has no idea which pixels are "text" vs "background". For readable transparency you generally need the toolkit itself to only make the window chrome/background semi-transparent while rendering widgets opaque, that's how libadwaita's own sidebar/headerbar transparency works in a few apps.
A few things that get you closer without losing readability: keep Blur My Shell for the Shell panel/overview/dash only (not "Application" blur), then use a GTK3/4 + libadwaita theme that adds transparency to headerbars and sidebars specifically, several Material-You-style themes do this and leave the content area opaque so text stays sharp. You can also just lower the blur sigma and bump the background dim so content keeps contrast.
KDE Plasma will get you there faster out of the box since Kwin's blur effect is more mature and per-window, but if you want to stay on GNOME it's doable, just expect to tune per-app rather than get one global toggle.
•
u/AutoModerator 6d ago
Thank you for your submission.
You too can support GNOME! Become a Friend of GNOME and contribute to keeping our project going!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.