Fix Gnome Shell 3.12 extensions being disabled at every startup

According to this bug on Ubuntu’s Launchpad bug tracker, every Gnome extension (including themes) fail to load at every startup. There are few way to workaround this problem:

• Setting option to “system default” instead of “Gnome or Classic” in the login screen (didn’t work for me)
• Resetting extensions entry in dconf (gsettings set org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions ‘[]’), logout, login, and re-enabling them (didn’t work for me)
• Autostart extensions at every login (this one worked)

For the last one you can follow  these steps:

1. Enable needed extensions
2. Get the list of installed ones executing this command:
   • gsettings get org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions
   • In my case the command returns this string:
     • [‘impatience@gfxmonk.net’, ‘ShowDesktopFromOverview@bazonbloch.arcor.de’, ‘topIcons@adel.gadllah@gmail.com’, ‘windowoverlay-icons@sustmidown.centrum.cz’, ‘user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com’]

       

       getting extensions lst

3. Launch gnome-session-properties:
   • gnome-session-properties
4. Add a new item:
   • Name: Enable extension
   • Command: gsettings set org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions “your list of extension from step 2, surrounded by double quotes”
   • In my case the command is exactly this one:
     • gsettings set org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions “[‘impatience@gfxmonk.net’, ‘ShowDesktopFromOverview@bazonbloch.arcor.de’, ‘topIcons@adel.gadllah@gmail.com’, ‘windowoverlay-icons@sustmidown.centrum.cz’, ‘user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com’]”

       

       setting extensions list at startup

5. Click Add, then Close
6. Reboot (or logout) to test

IMPORTANT: this is a workaround, remember to re-execute these steps when adding/removing an extension. Sometimes check the opened bug, hopefully it will be fixed someday.