Tiling Shell v18.0 Second Release Candidate with GNOME 51 Support
A new release candidate for the most popular tiling extension for GNOME is available for testing. The interesting part, though, isn't the code.
On 19 September 2026, maintainer Domenico Ferraro finalized Tiling Shell v18.0 by editing a June announcement in place. There's no RC2 tag to speak of. Just a candidate that matured, slowly, into the real thing.
Why the timing is odd
Here's the setup. Ferraro first shipped the 18.0-candidate on 22 June, opening issue #582 as both the official announcement and a community testing thread. The GitHub release page still stamps that original date and notes "11 commits to v18.0 since this release." Those 11 commits crossed 32 files and touched 14 contributors. The announcement was never retired. It was rewritten in place.
Roughly three months passed between those two commits, and most of that time was just the candidate sitting there, accumulating test-validated changes.
The reason is practical. Tiling Shell now supports GNOME 42 through GNOME 51. "Starting with Tiling Shell v18.0, the release strategy is changing," he wrote. "Thoroughly testing every feature has become increasingly time-consuming. Some features are also difficult for me to test directly because they require specific hardware or setups (for example, drawing tablet support)."
So the flow flips. Versions debut on GitHub as candidates once they're feature-complete. Users opt in to test early and report back. Only then does the extension move to extensions.gnome.org.
It's arguably the honest thing to do. At ~860,281 downloads and ~2,043 stars, this is one of the most-used single extensions on the whole directory, and it's entirely one person. (Ferraro runs on Patreon and Ko-fi; Zorin OS is among the named supporters.)
What actually changed
GNOME 51 support is the headline. It lands on the final commit and stretches the supported range from GNOME 42 all the way up to 51.
The most impactful code change since June is a fractional-scaling fix. GNOME 49 enabled fractional scaling by default under Wayland, but the extension kept assuming it was off. At 150% scale, the indicator menu, snap assistant, layout editor, and tile previews ballooned to 1.5× their proper size. The menu didn't even fit on screen.
The fix, from ScherbakovAl (PR #589), adds an isFractionalScalingEnabled() helper and corrects several tile-geometry math bugs. It closes issue #541.
A few additions were already baked into the June candidate, so they count as v18 features rather than RC2-only news. Right-mouse-button activation, the thing Windows PowerToys users keep asking for, is in. So is a keybinding to untile every window at once, plus a setting to apply a layout across all workspaces at the same time.
Not cheap on effort either. The entire delta between the June candidate and the final release came down to platform support, one big scaling fix, and a wave of translations.
For those keeping score, the Russian addition was the complete one with all 167 strings. Italian, Polish, German, Spanish, and French all got updates too. Tiling Shell has quietly become more international than most extensions of its size.
Two regression fixes are worth naming. A Super-key activation bug had stopped window-drag tiling while the key was held (closes #485). An alt-tab race condition could leave disposed actors behind, throwing errors like "Gjs_ui_altTab_WindowIcon has been already disposed."
Can you install it yet? Not on the official directory. extensions.gnome.org still lists 17.3 as the latest active version. That's expected under the new model. You can test the candidate manually, though.
Download the 18.0-candidate zip and extract it into ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com. Reload GNOME Shell, then enable it. Two builds exist depending on your shell: one for 45 through 51 and one for 42 through 44. Run gnome-shell --version if you're unsure which.
Keep in mind that this is pre-release. You'll be running candidate software on a daily driver.
Head here to the candidate notes and download.
