Blur Cinnamon

A Cinnamon extension to Blur, Dim, Colorize, Desaturate and make transparent parts of the Cinnamon Desktop.

Cinnamon components you can effect (currently):

1. The overview
2. The Expo
3. Cinnamon Panels
4. Applet popup menus (i.e Menu menu, Calendar, etc.)

Blurring can also be disabled if you just want a transparent or semi-transparent effect without blurring.

Features

• Gaussian blur algorithm (borrowed from the Gnome extension Blur-my-Shell) with a user configurable intensity
• Simple blur algorithm (the Cinnamon built-in algorithm) which I would only recommend for very old computers
• Dimming overlay with user configurable color and intensity (fully-transparent to a solid color)
• Makes the Panels, Popup menus and the Expo transparent so that the desktop background image effects are visible
• Allows you to adjust the color saturation of the background overlay. You can reduced saturation all the way down to gray scale
• You can use general settings for Popups/Panels/Overview/Expo or use unique settings for each

Requirements

This extension requires Cinnamon 6.0 or better (i.e Mint 21.3 or better).

If you have installed any of the following Cinnamon extensions, you should disable them before enabling Blur Cinnamon:

• Transparent panels
• Transparent panels reloaded
• Blur Overview

Using any of the above with Blur Cinnamon may have some odd side effects that would require a Cinnamon restart to resolve.

Limitations

1. The Main Menu effects are intended to be used with the Cinnamon (6.4) theme or the Mint-Y dark desktop themes. The effects might work will with some other themes but I have not tested them so the effects might not work out just right. You can try the Mint-Y light themes but it might be hard to read the menu items without some playing around with the settings and the background image. To make sure that the blurred background does not spill over any rounded corners, the Main Menu rounded corners will be disabled when Main Menu effects are enabled. Menu Menu effects are disabled by default.
2. The panel applet popup menu effects works for all the applets that I have tested except "Cinnamenu", which uses a bit of an odd way to activate the popup menu, making it more difficult to intercept the menu open process so that I can change the menu's transparency setting.
3. Currently, any windows that are moved such that they overlap with a panel or the Main Menu will not be visible beneath the panel as you might expect with a transparent panel. This is because the blur effect is applied to a user interface element that floats above all windows just like the panel floats above the windows. At some point I hope to look into allowing the blur element to appear below all windows rather than above and make the a optional behavior setting.
4. If you disable effects for any Cinnamon component under the General tab of the setting dialog while any "Use unique effect settings" options are enabled under the other tabs, the components "effect setting" options under the other tabs will still be visible, but changing those setting will have no effect until you re-enable the component under the General tab. Ideally those effect setting would only be visible when the component is enabled under the general tab but Cinnamon setting support is a bit limited in this way.

Installation

• Right click on the cinnamon panel and click "System Settings"
• Click on the "Extensions" icon under the "Preferences" category
• Click the "Download" tab and then click the "Blur Cinnamon" entry
• Click the "Install" button on the right and then return to the "Manage" tab
• Select the new "Blur Cinnamon" entry and then click the "+" button at the bottom of the window
• Use the "gears" icon next to the "Blur Cinnamon" entry to open the setting window and setup the preferred behavior

Feedback

Please leave a comment here on cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com or you can create an issue on my Github to give me feedback, make a suggestion or to report any issues you find.

If you like this Cinnamon extension, please give it a "star" here any maybe on my Github repository as well to encourage me to continue working on the project. Thanks!

Credits

Some code was borrowed from the BlurOverview Extension by nailfarmer.

The Gaussian effect code was borrowed from the Gnome Blur my shell extension by Aurélien Hamy.

The Blur Cinnamon icon was generated by Google Gemini