Blur Cinnamon

by klangman

Score 70

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UUID: BlurCinnamon@klangman

Last edited:

1 day ago 2026-03-01, 16:13

Last commit: [4fcb5d88] BlurCinnamon@klangman: Update es.po (#1020)

Allows you to blur, colorize, desaturate and adjust the dimming of several Cinnamon Desktop components

README

Blur Cinnamon (now with dynamic blur)

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

Cinnamon components you can apply effects to (currently):

The Overview
The Expo
The Panels
Applet popup menus (i.e Menu menu, Calendar, etc.) (#)
The Desktop background image (#)
Desktop Notification popups (#)
The panel tooltip popups (#)
The Coverflow and Timeline 3D Alt-Tab switchers (not the Cinnamon default Alt-Tab switcher!)
Application window backgrounds (#)
Desklet backgrounds (#)

(#) Note: The Blur Cinnamon effects for the (#) marked Cinnamon components above are disabled by default. They can be enabled in the Blur Cinnamon configuration window. Some effects will override your theme settings to force transparency.

Background (Blur) Effect Options

Effect	Components	Description
None	Alt-Tab, Desklets, Desktop, Expo, Overview	Will not apply any blurring, but allows you to apply other effects like dimming and desaturation.
Transparent	Panels, Menus, Notifications, Tooltips	Makes the component transparent allowing whatever is under it to appear, but no blurring is applied.
Transparent to wallpaper	Panels, Menu, Notifications, Tooltips, Windows	Applies a background to the component that shows a copy of the desktop wallpaper, no blur effects.
Simple static blur	Panels, Menu, Notifications, Tooltips, Windows	Uses the Cinnamon blur effect (it's very subtle) on top of the desktop wallpaper
Gaussian static blur	Panels, Menu, Notifications, Tooltips, Windows	Uses a Gaussian blur effect on top of the desktop wallpaper
Gaussian dynamic blur	Panels, Menu, Notifications, Tooltips, Windows	Uses a Gaussian blur effect on top of a full desktop clone with windows and the desktop wallpaper
Simple / Gaussian	Alt-Tab, Desklets, Desktop, Expo, Overview	These components can't benefit from anything other than static blurring (blur effect on top of the desktop wallpaper)

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 components transparent (when needed) so that the desktop background image effects are visible
Allows you to adjust the color saturation of the Cinnamon components. You can reduced saturation all the way down to gray scale
Uses a rounded corner effect to match your themes rounded corner settings, and provides manual rounded corner setting for application window effects so you can match the rounded corner of the application windows you choose to blur. This does NOT round window corners, it only allows the blurred background to match the rounding of it's window
Ability to changes the opacity of application windows so application window blur effects are visible under the window
Option to add a backlight effect to the focused window using a background image blur effect spilling over the focused windows borders
You can use general settings across all Cinnamon components or use unique settings for each component type
Allows you to apply custom CSS code to panels to achieve a number of custom panel effects like rounded corners, borders, changing the panel width, etc. Careful though, you can mess up your panels, but remember everything will go back to normal if you simply remove any Custom CSS settings you added to Blur Cinnamon.

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

The Applet popup 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. Blur Cinnamon Popup-menu effects are disabled by default.
The Applet popup-menu effects works for all the applets that I have tested except "Cinnamenu". Cinnamenu is preventing other code from receiving the "open-state-changed" event which Blur Cinnamon uses to know when to apply popup-menu theme setting and when to resize and show the blur background element. This issue is fixed in the latest Cinnamenu from Fredcw GitHub but you will need to manually fix the current Cinnamon Spices version of Cinnamenu (see here)
The experimental dynamic blur effect for application windows causes several artifacts and flashing graphical issues, therefore I don't recommend using this experimental option. If I can find a solution to these issues I will remove "experimental" from the description in a future release.
This extension currently does not work under Wayland, it only works under X11. The extension automatically detects Wayland and disables most of the features of the extension.

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

Custom Panel CSS Examples:

The following examples of CSS code can be applied to panels to achieve a custom panel effect.

Effect	Custom CSS string
Grey borders (all around)	border-width: 1px; border-color: rgb(70,70,70);
Gray top only border	border-top: 1px; border-color: rgb(70,70,70);
Grey bottom only border	border-bottom: 1px; border-color: rgb(70,70,70);
Shrink a horizontal panel width	margin-left: 100px; margin-right: 100px;
Shrink a vertical panel height	margin-top: 100px; margin-bottom: 100px;
Rounded the corners of a panel	border-radius: 20px;
Padding for horizontal panels	padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px;
Padding for vertical panels	padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;

You can combine and modify the above as desired and add the result to the "Custom CSS" entry within the panels table under the Panels settings. The "Use unique effect settings for the Panels" and the "Enable advanced options to apply unique settings for each panel" options must to be enabled see the panels table. Edit/add the appropriate table entry for the panel you wish to effect then modify the "Custom CSS" entry. Typos and syntax errors will typically result in the panel effects reverting to default, but other issue could result. You can always undue your effects by deleting the contents of the "Custom CSS" field in the table. Not all CSS options will work, it's limited to the CSS that is supported by Cinnamon and further limited by hard-coded settings used by the Cinnamon panels code.

Here is the CSS setting I use on my bottom panel to get a centered panel with rounded corners and a grey border:

padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; border-radius: 20px; border-width: 1px; border-color: rgb(40,40,40); margin-left: 200px; margin-right: 200px;

The border radius rounds the corners, the padding adds space on each end of the panel to accommodate the rounded corners better, and the margins shrink the panel so that it does not fill the width of the screen resulting in a centered panel.

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 and rounded corner effect code was borrowed from the Gnome Blur my shell extension by Aurélien Hamy.

The Blur Cinnamon icon was generated by Google Gemini

CHANGELOG

Open

Changelog

2.0.0

Added a "Gaussian dynamic blur" option for Menus, Panels, Notifications and Tooltips. This allows the windows that are under the blurred component to be visible in the blurred element, resulting in an effect that allows the component to appear to float above the desktop wallpaper and windows rather then a static blur effect which shows just the desktop wallpaper under the component.
Added an experimental "Gaussian dynamic blur" option for Application windows. This option is experimental because it causes frequent graphical artifacts and missing elements of the blurred windows in the background of the windows where you have enabled dynamic Application window blurring effects. For this reason I do not recommend using this feature, and it will not be used automatically when the generic effect settings is set to use dynamic blurring.
Fixed the Notifications blurred element so that it does not appear above full-screen windows unless the Cinnamon Notifications option "Display notifications over fullscreen windows" is enabled. Thanks to phiphifier for reporting the issue.
Fixed the Notifications blurred element so that its size an position properly matches the Notification window when the Cinnamon Notifications option "Show notifications on the bottom side of the screen" is enabled. Thanks to misscuteblush for reporting the issue.
Fixed the rounding of the blurred elements for Menus, Notifications and Tooltips when the UI scaling factor is not 100%.
Fixed some issues with the generic effects settings not applying to Menus.
Added new default "Conky" and "Gnome Terminal" Application window configuration table entries to the Application window list. These will only appear for new installs (upgrades will have to add the entries manually). The new default table entries are disabled by default just like the other default entries.
Fix to allow Conky windows setup with the "own_window_type = 'desktop'" setting to have Blur Cinnamon effects applied.
Changed the default effect type to be the new Dynamic Gaussian effect. This only effects new installs, upgraded installs will need to change the settings manually to enable the Dynamic Gaussian effects.
Thanks to those who beta tested the dynamic blur feature and reported issues (i.e. Selinaru and others)

1.7.2

Added a panel settings option to "Brighten" (dim=0 and saturation=100) a panel when the mouse is hovering over a panel (disabled by default)
Fixed an issue where the 6.6 Menu sidebar was not maintaining its transparency after changing the "Maximum sidebar width" menu option.
Fixed an issue with the standard cinnamon minimize animation when a window has a blurred background applied.

1.7.1

Added a "Transparent" option to Panels/Menus/Tooltips/Notifications setting. This will provide a true transparent option where whatever is below the effected element will be visible (no blurring, not saturation). For panels this is no different to the Transparent Panels extension.
Added a "Default window settings" row to the Windows effect table. When this row is enabled, all windows will have effects applied, except application windows that match some other row in the table, in which case that rows settings will apply (a disabled row will cause the window to have no effects applied despite the "Default window settings" row being enabled).
Added code to improve the Cinnamon 6.6 Menu effects (sidebar transparency).
Added code to improve the Cinnamon 6.6 "Cinnamon" theme support (might also help with other themes that use CSS padding).
Added a "Custom CSS" option to the "Advanced" panel setting table. Using this option, users who know CSS can apply options to control the panels like shrinking the panel to be less then the screen width, adding rounded corners, adding borders, etc.
Another attempt to improve the performance of opening menus after the 1st time any particular menu is opened.
Fixed some blurring artifacts seen when restoring a minimized window while using the "Focused window backlight effect".

1.7.0

Added the ability to apply effects to Desklet backgrounds.
Significant configuration GUI redesign to use fewer tabs. Adding a new tab for Desklets would start to cause an unreasonable GUI window width.
Fixed the rounded corner effect so that it produces a much smoother edge.
Improved how the blurred panel animates when hiding or showing a panel.
Fix for Notification and Windows not getting updated when changing generic settings
Added an "About" tab to the configuration GUI
Modified the Icon so that it does not have a white border
Added a hack fix for panels with custom CSS sizes
Fix a naming conflict with the rounded corner effect during upgrading the extension.
Added options to use generic settings when using the panel specific settings option
Some improved configuration GUI option names and tooltips

1.6.1

Fixed a 1.6.0 regression where the dimming of desktop effects are not removed after disabiling the desktop effects on the general page in the config window.
Added support for rounded cinnamon panels, but currently to enable rounded corners in Cinnamon panels you need to manually edit your cinnamon.css file.

1.6.0

Added the ability to apply effects to application window backgrounds
Allows to you adjust the opacity of application windows so that the Blur Cinnamon application window effects can be seen below any window
Added a rounded corner effect which allows for rounded corners on the Blur Cinnamon effects when Popup Menus, Notifications, Tooltips and Application Windows are using rounded corners. Blur Cinnamon no longer overrides the rounded corner settings that your theme defines for Menus, Notifications and Tooltips
Added the ability to set a dimming color to the desktop background image
Added an optional backlight effect to the focused window using the blur effect, allowing it to spill over the focused windows borders giving a backlight type effect. This is effect is disabled by default
Added the ability to apply effects to titlebar context popup menus
Added options so you can select which type of popup menus will have effects applied (applet popups, panel menus, titlebar menus)
Fixed a bug where the blur intensity slider control for some components was only shown when the expo blur type was set to Gaussian
Improve Popup Menu size tracking so that the blurred actor better follows the animated open/close effects

1.5.2

When the theme override option is disabled, restore the theme's menu settings
Fix an issue with Alt-Tab support after the extension is reloaded (after an update) or disabled
Fix a typo in Notifications settings tab (Sent -> Send)

1.5.1

Fix 1.5.0 regression, a missing function left out of the 1.5.0 merge into the spices repo

1.5.0

Added effects to the Coverflow and Timeline Alt-Tab switchers (enabled by default)
Added the ability to apply effects to the Notification popups (disabled by default)
Added the ability to apply effects to the Panel Tooltip popups (disabled by default)
Added a welcome Notification popup with a button to open the configuration window
Added a panel option to restore the default (solid) look of the panel(s) when a window is maximized (thanks to decsny for some code)
Fixed an issue where a blurred element remains visible after a menu is closed (thanks to SpeeQz1 for the bug report)
Fixed an issue where some signals are not disconnected when disabling the extension
Rewrote some parts of the code to make it easier to maintain and reduce code duplication
Improved popup menu performance in general, particularly when re-opening menus for a second time

1.4.2

Fixed a typo in the code that prevented the effects from being removed from the desktop background image after disabling the extension (thanks to OthorWight for finding the issue).
Fixed an issue where the Desktop Background was blurred on startup even when the "Only apply effect settings if the desktop is not in focus" option was enabled (thanks to AxeldeWater for spotting the issue).
The Cinnamenu not blurring issue is is fixed here, see this issue to fix the Cinnamon Spices version

1.4.1

Fix for the main menu's favorite box fading from a solid color into it's blurred state on open (Mint-Y theme)
Take into account the popup-menu box margins when applying blurring so that blurring can be properly sized for the popup-menu (Orchis-Dark theme)
Fix a typo in the setting window
Properly free popup-menu blur elements
Improve the transition of panels when disabling/enabling (i.e entering/exiting Overview) so that the panel does change in brightness suddenly
Prevent errors under wayland (but the blur effects are still not working under wayland)

1.4.0

Added the ability to apply effects to the Desktop background image (you can Dim, Blur and Desaturate, but currently you can't colorize the background image)
Improved how the blur effect keeps in sync with the size of the the panels
Always hid the parts of windows that are under the panels, even when no blur effect is need to be more consistent
Several fixes , minor improvements, optimizations and simplifications to the code

1.3.0

Replaced the Main Menu effects with generic Popup Menu effects which covers the main menu as well as all other Applet popup menus.
Added a Saturation option which allow you to desaturate the background overlay (0% grey scale to 100%)

1.2.0

Added the ability (disabled by default) to apply effects to the Main Menu (menu@cinnamon.org)
Improve the wording of several configuration options to make it more clear what they do

1.1.0

Added the ability to apply different effects for every panel (or disable effects for some panels) based on the panel location and the monitor it is on
Fixed the blur overlay animation for showing/hiding a panel when the panel is not set to "Always show panel"
Simplify the settings: always show the dimming color but default to black giving a traditional dimming effect
Added an option to prevent the extension from modifying the panel setting, so it it will only add a blur effect under the panel. This is useful when using a theme that is already transparent and you want the themes settings to remain

1.0.0

Initial version committed to cinnamon spices

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86 Comments

dearvalentina-20 hours ago

Yooooo, I was so happy with how this looked when I installed it several days ago, but went "oh well, I guess it's some limitation about not seeing stuff behind my menu because programs are independent of each other or whatever". Lo and behold, new update, and it looks even better. Goated.

Kevin Langman-10 hours ago

Glad you like the update, hopefully I didn't cause any new bugs, it's a fair chunk of code to implement dynamic blur so I am sure there are issues that I failed to find in my testing.

Source-Coder-3 days ago

I used Blur Cinnamon for a year, i rlly liked it, but it was kind of a deal breaker that it isn't dynamic ... I'm rlly happy you're working on this right now! It must be very hard making it work with Mutter, can't wait to revisit "Dynamic Blur Cinnamon" when you got it working, you're a wizard sir Langman, keep it up!

Kevin Langman-3 days ago

Thanks for the comment. To get dynamic blur working I thought of a small trick. By using Clutter clones I was able to add window clones to the blurred background actors (the same thing I use for the static blurring). Then its just a matter of making sure we have the right set of clones and there position changes are reflected correctly on the blurred background actors. Just having some issues now with corner cases and avoiding (what I suspect) is Clutter/Mutter bugs. My github version has dynamic blurring that works well with only a few bugs. Hopefully I can fix those and update cinnamon spices soon.

Source-Coder-2 days ago

Well thanks for your awesome work. That's probably the most elegant acrylic/glass hack ever, i can imagine that there are a few edge cases haha. Wish you good luck, i will definitely install it again when it's ready.

phiphifier-4 days ago

Hello again! Still love the extension. Just wanted to point out something that bothers me. The notification overlay is appearing over full screened apps while notifications shouldn't be visible. This one is easy to test, just full-screen a youtube video or the like, and receive a notification. Hopefully this is an easy fix! Thanks so much for your hard work. My desktop looks fantastic with the help of this extension: https://imgur.com/a/MgzkTvE

Kevin Langman-2 days ago

I believe I have fixed this in my development GitHub version. So now it's just waiting for me to feel like I am ready to push the next version to Cinnamon Spices.

Kevin Langman-4 days ago

Thanks for the reminder of this. I did notice that at one point but then forgotten about it. Making a github issue is better than posting here since it gets on my list of todos. I'll work on it for the next release.

CyberWolf-6 days ago

On my HP Omen 17 laptop, if Blur Cinnamon is on, yes it looks good, BUT.... 1. as someone else reported it cause severe lag in scolling in the launch menu. and in my case also 2. if I have sa a window up that takes up most of screen, if I bring up the launch menu, it shows the menu with the wallpaper showing thru. VERY disconcerting. As soon as I disabled Blur, scrolling back to fast and stutter free and the display isse in #2 also disappears. So guess I shall stop for now using it and remove it.

Kevin Langman-6 days ago

1. I have seen cases where the scrolling is slow. I will try to profile the system the next time I can recreate the problem and hopefully see what's slowing things down, but I doubt it's Blur Cinnamon directly, likely just transparency related. 2. What you want is called "Dynamic Blur" and I am working on that right now. I am hoping to get that code in the Cinnamon Spices version in a few weeks but it depends on how my testing goes. The lack of dynamic blur is why I disabled Menu blurring by default!

Daniel-1 week ago

Kevin, I cannot possibly begin to tell you just how good this extension is. My desktop looks incredible now. Thank you!

Kevin Langman-1 week ago

Thanks Daniel.. I am working on Dynamic Blurring now, so hopefully that will make your desktop look even more to your liking once I get all the bugs are ironed out.

Pedro Nunes-1 month ago

So far and knowing all the limitations. The only downside it is not listed in here, it's performance. Scrolling in the new cinnamon menu with blur cinammon enabled on the menu became really laggy, I had to disable it for the menu. As for specs R5 3600x, RX 6700XT, it can't be lack of horse power :) Apart from that, great extension

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

It's odd that you have scrolling lag.. I have a Ryzen7 5800X with a 6700XT and my menu scrolls fast even under a Mint 22.3 Virtualbox install. Maybe you have some driver issue? I don't know.. It sounds like it is struggling due to the transparency. With static blurring the blur cost is a one time thing, so it's hard to imagine that blurring is the problem. Do you have the same issue if you set the menu "Type of background effect" to "Transparent" and "Transparent to background" in the Blue Cinnamon settings? I am guessing you will have the same lag, but let me know if you don't cause that would be unexpected.

Pedro Nunes-3 weeks ago

Sorry Kevin for the late reply. Yes even with different transparency types the issue persists. Even now with the new MESA 25.2 that was updated. Keep in mind this only applies to the mint menu. In order to force transparency on the mint menu, I had to go to the : 1. component specific settings 2. Show Settings for the Component: Menus 3. Toogled ON the options below 3.1 Use Unique Effect Settings for the popup menus 3.2 Apply Effects to applet popup menus 3.3 Override some of the popup menu theme settings 3.4. All the rest are OFF. This was the only way to have blur/transparency in the mint menu. Maybe the issue is just me forcing something that wasn't suppose to be used, given that by default this menu is not transparent/blured :)

Kevin Langman-3 weeks ago

I tried scrolling the menu on my laptop (which is setup to sacrifice speed for quiet operation) and I see similar performance issue in the menu when the menu is transparent. On my desktop (Ryzen7/ + 6700TX) there is zero leg. In both cases the CPU doesn't budge much, so I have to assume it has to do with the GPU. I don't believe there is any Blur Cinnamon code running when you are scrolling in the menu, so I have to think this is a GPU performance issue (driver or otherwise).

Pedro Nunes-3 weeks ago

For me, it's really the CPU that ramps up for some reason in one of the threads. But it doesn't happen everytime. If I find I better way to replicate or show a log I will try to send to you :) Cheers

phiphifier-3 weeks ago

Same issue on nvidia GTX1050 with the transparent menus. Issue persists with any setting combo short of disabling transparent menus entirely.

Kevin Langman-3 weeks ago

Have you ever noticed performance issues with the "Transparent Panels" extension as well? I am wondering if you are somehow running Cinnamon is software rendering mode? What do you see with this command: glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" This is what I get: OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (radeonsi, navi22, LLVM 21.1.5, DRM 3.64, 6.18.6-200.fc43.x86_64)

phiphifier-3 weeks ago

Also no, I have zero problems with transparent panels. Although my panel is completely transparent, so maybe the conditions for the issue to present itself in that context hasn't been met.

phiphifier-3 weeks ago

Oh my bad, forgot my DE uses integrated graphics when I wrote my comment. Mesa Intel(R) HD Graphics 630 (KBL GT2) I noticed you pushed an update today. I'm not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me but my start menu seems to be running a bit faster with transparency on. I'll let you know if it acts up again.

phiphifier-1 month ago

Hey, love this extension! I see you've mentioned adding the ability to see windows below the menu when it's transparent instead of seeing right through to the desktop. I know this is a relatively small feature that's probably complex to get working, but I would love nothing more! Regardless, keep up the great work and thank you.

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

I recently added a transparent option, but it is just makes things transparent without adding a blurred element. So it works like the Transparent Panels extension. I have tried a couple of approaches to implementing true dynamic blurring and hit technical issues every time so far, but I haven't completely given up yet. Unlike Gnome, Cinnamon does not yet have a built-in blur able to do dynamic blurring. Implementing one from within an extension means we need an API to read pixels from the screen and so far I have hit issues with that.

phiphifier-1 month ago

Hey look at that! Switched to transparent menus and it looks great. While blur would be nice to keep the menus looking better at lower alpha levels, upping the opacity is also a valid move and still looks great. Thanks.

Janne-d-Arc-1 month ago

I really liked the new “Custom Panel CSS” option, but I disabled it because when it's enabled, I can no longer click on the corners to open the Cinnamon menu or the “Show Desktop” button. Would it be possible to only add the panel border to the sides that do not touch the edge of the screen?

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

Using "border-top: 1px solid grey;" will get you a top only border. But in my testing the menu doesn't open if my mouse is at the edge of the panel anyhow even when there is no panel borders. So I am not sure if I am understanding the problem you are describing correctly??

Janne-d-Arc-1 month ago

That fixed the problem, thank you very much! I meant that when the Cinnamon menu or the "Show desktop" button are in the corners, you don't need to press the button precisely, you just need to click on the corners, but this didn't work if all the borders were added, as it seems that the border was blocking the corners of the screen. Adding only the top border to a bottom panel or only the bottom border to a top panel solves this problem. :)

linuxtopia-1 month ago

hello thanks for this great extension. after linux mint 22.3 update I think "generic effect settings" has no any changing for my setup. Dim, blur intensity or else has no any visible changing.

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

That's odd. Not sure why that happened. Did you try restarting cinnamon before you deleted and reinstalled Blur Cinnamon?

linuxtopia-1 month ago

yes tried several times but did not help then I removed all residual files about the extension. luckily it worked.

linuxtopia-1 month ago

update: manually removing its folder and reinstalling worked. why that occurred no idea. but may help others too.

laservius-1 month ago

Everything looks good, except the sidebar in the menu isn't affected. Is there a way to make the sidebar also transparent and blurred?

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

I assume you are using Mint 22.3 with the new Menu? I know about the issue and I did a quick attempt to address the problem. I was able to make the sidebar transparent but all the items in the sidebar still had non-transparent backgrounds which looked really bad. I'll spend some more time on fixing that at some point. There is also a problem with the new version of the "Cinnamon" theme which I have a fix for. There will be a version 1.7.1 soon with that fix and some other improvements, but the sidebar fix will likely have to wait for the version after that.

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

Actually, the fix to make the 6.6 Menu's sidebar transparent was easier then I thought, so it will be in the 1.7.1 version that I am pushing to Cinnamon-Spices today.

laservius-1 month ago

Actually, I see one problem. Blur overrides the "Maximum sidebar width" in start menu settings. It sets it at (px) 150. If I change it from 150, it goes back to the smaller side size that I originally had, and it is not transparent again. Also, I am not able to change the size of the sidebar now.

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

I see that the sidebar goes back to it's solid colour after changing the "Maximum sidebar width" in the Menus settings. This is due to some optimizations that I did to try and speed up opening the menu (after the initial opening where it finds all the actors to modify). I think I can just re-apply the transparent setting on the previously found actors to fix that. But I can't recreate the issue where the sidebar does not change with new "Maximum sidebar width". Maybe you don't have any labels that require the extra width? It's a "Maximum" not a absolute size.

laservius-1 month ago

I had an application in the favorites that had a long name. When I removed that app, the sidebar returned to a reasonable size. The menu now looks good, thanks.

laservius-1 month ago

The update looks great! The sidebar is transparent now. Thanks!

laservius-1 month ago

That's great to know. Thanks!

drdrummie-1 month ago

Great work!

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

Thanks!

Janne-d-Arc-1 month ago

After not using this extension for a while, I'm happy to see how much it has improved. I really like the new window glow effect, although sometimes it doesn't work properly and produces a blurry, completely transparent rectangle where the window should be. I don't know if this is due to a conflict with another setting or extension. Also,would it be possible to set a specific color instead of taking the color from the desktop background? It would be similar to the blue glow that windows used to have in KDE Plasma 4. Thank you so much for your work!

Kevin Langman-1 month ago

I also have seen cases where the backlight effect applied to the wrong location. I have yet to track down how that happens, but I hope to spend some more time on it soon. The backlight effect is just a happy side effect of mixing the Blur and rounded corner effects. So it was just something that fell out of my testing rather then an effort to achieve border effects. I have been working on a rounded window corner extension which is currently in the prototype state. I still have a number of technical hurdles to overcome, but if I can fix those issues then I plan for that extension to offer the ability to apply different color window borders and window shadow effects. Not sure if it will ever see the light of day, so no promises.

rulean89-2 months ago

Thanks for your great work Kevin!! You're making outstanding progress lately with rounded corners and the Backlight effect. I always wanted costume color shadows for the windows, this is the closest I've seen. Maybe is time to rename the extension because it's way more than blur.

Kevin Langman-2 months ago

Thanks for the comment. I am glad you like the window border effect. Maybe one day I will look into making an extension dedicated to changing the window border colors. I also plan on working on a rounded corner extension at one point. But with so many ideas I am not sure when I will get to actually do any of this.

Kevin Langman-3 months ago

Oh.. Forgot to mention, version 1.6.0 also supports rounded corners so now your themes rounded corner settings will NOT be overridden by Blur Cinnamon any more.

Kevin Langman-3 months ago

Version 1.6.0 is available now. It adds the ability to apply effects to just about any window. When possible, it's best to setup your window to be transparent (several terminal applications allow this) and then tell Blur Cinnamon to apply effects to that window. But even windows that don't have transparent options can still use the new window effects by adjusting the Blur Cinnamon Opacity option to make the window slightly transparent. This version also adds a new "Backlight" effect for the focused window (disabled by default) and Blur Cinnamon can now apply effects to the Titlebar context menu (when Menu effects are enabled). Lastly, there are a few fixes and other minor improvements (see the change log for more details). Please report bugs if you find any!!

giquo-3 months ago

This is great good looking customization and I like it a lot, but had we addressed the memory leak? when I start and the extension is on, Cinnamon goes from 250MB-ish and at the end of the day it reaches 1.5Gb Only occurs when I activate the extension. I'm using Transparent Panels, but is not the same. Thank you so much for your work on this good looking extension :3

Kevin Langman-3 months ago

That's odd... I use it all day long and my Cinnamon process does not go much about 252MB by the end of the day. Blur Cinnamon does create a bunch of X11BackgroundActor's but those are sharing the background pic texture with the Cinnamon background so it should not be introducing much more memory usage. What Cinnamon component effect do you have enabled? Maybe you can try disabling (one at a time) to see if the memory growth is only seen when one specific component effects are enabled?

giquo-3 months ago

sorry the late reply. Blur Cinnamon is actually the only extension I use, and only when I fully enable it (all options except wallpaper) is when RAM goes up, haven't done the test of "which component makes the RAM grow". Also also, when I turn on and off wallpaper blur it keeps the dim color, if I repeat it keep adding a layer and doesn't go, I had to Alt+ F2 + r to make it go after disabled

Kevin Langman-2 months ago

The issue where the dimming is not getting removed when desktop effects are disabled has been fixed in version 1.6.1.

Kevin Langman-3 months ago

The Desktop dimming not going away is a regression in the new 1.6.0 version I believe. I'll fix that. Thanks for reporting the issue!!! If you get any more info about that memory leak let me know.

Van Irie-4 months ago

I'm not sure if I'm simply not finding the correct setting, but is it possible to make the background of right-click context menus on title bars to look the same as the context menu when clicking on the panel?

Kevin Langman-4 months ago

I have added title bar context menu effects in my github version, will submit it to cinnamon-spices in the days ahead.

Kevin Langman-4 months ago

Oh... Actually I was wrong, the window title bar context menu does use the Javascript popupmenu class. So I do think I can use my current code to apply effects. I'll work on that.

Kevin Langman-4 months ago

No, that's not something that Blur Cinnamon currently does. I did briefly look into doing that at one point, but I didn't find it in the Cinnamon Javascript code, so I suspect it's done in C/C++ code. Not so easy to intercept (but maybe not impossible). Also can't apply effects to the desktop context menu for the same reason. Maybe one day I will take a second look at this.

NiceLMint-4 months ago

It looks beautiful, it's just a pity that it's not fully translated. [img]https://i.postimg.cc/2jwDpxB1/Zrzut-ekranu-z-2025-10-07-12-15-59.png[/img]

Kevin Langman-4 months ago

You can translate it to your language if you like, or did you mean to say translucent, as in the windows are not visible behind the blurred Cinnamon components? If so, that is something I hope to address in the future assuming I can figure out how to implement it.

NiceLMint-4 months ago

Chętnie bym przetłumaczył gdybym wiedział jak to zrobic :) nie jestem komputerowym specjalistą. Na chwilę obecną Twoje rozszerzenie wygląda bardzo dobrze i u mnie działa bez problemu, uzyskałem takie efekty jakie potrzebowałem. Dzięki i pozdrawiam. https://i.postimg.cc/VvWLZcmk/blur-cinnamon.png

Kevin Langman-4 months ago

You can follow the instructions [here](https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2521) to translate cinnamon spices to another language. If you follow the Github steps then you can contribute your translation so that others can benefit from your work. I am glad you like my extension!

RT Cunningham-5 months ago

After fixing Cinnamenu, it's awesome.

NemoDam-5 months ago

Hi, thanks for this wonderful extension, congratulations indeed. I'd like to ask if it would be possible in the future to set transparency on Cinnamenu, an alternative extension to the default Cinnamon menu. Thanks again.

Kevin Langman-5 months ago

It can work with Cinnamenu. See the "Limitations" section above (point 2) for more info and instructions. In short, there is a simple change to Cinnamenu that allows Blur Cinnamon to get signaled when Cinnamenu is opened. With a simple one line change Cinnamenu will work well with Blue Cinnamon.

NemoDam-5 months ago

It works fine with this fix. Thanks again, and sorry for not reading the "Limitations" section above

AnubisMarcelo-5 months ago

The problem continues. I don't know if this helps but I took a look at the looking glass log and this appeared: error t=2025-09-23T11:27:10Z [TypeError: this._setPanelTransparency is not a function]: Failed to evaluate 'enable' function on extension: BlurCinnamon@klangman error t=2025-09-23T11:27:10Z [BlurCinnamon@klangman]: Extension BlurCinnamon@klangman: Could not create extension object. [BlurCinnamon@klangman]: Error importing extension.js from BlurCinnamon@klangman

Kevin Langman-5 months ago

That's odd. The function is there now. I just checked the repo. Make sure your version is 1.5.1 now, and then restart Cinnamon (Alt-F2, type r <enter>).

AnubisMarcelo-5 months ago

Sorry, I forgot to say that I'm on Linux Mint 21.3

AnubisMarcelo-5 months ago

This last update came with bugs for me: it gives error when booting and has already occurred from the screen to get stuck in both overview and alt+tab

Kevin Langman-5 months ago

Sorry... My fault.. I somehow deleted a function when I was applying my changes to the spices repo. I will be pushing a fix in a few min.

Janne-d-Arc-5 months ago

I love this extension. Maybe the only thing I would ask for is to be able to save the settings for the different panels in a profile with a chosen name. For example, I would set the top panel to be completely opaque with a dark grey color while the left panel would be semi-transparent with a light grey color, and I would call this profile “Unity", so that if I select the “Unity” profile, it would automatically set those settings and colors for those panels.

Kevin Langman-5 months ago

That's a good idea, but I am not sure how to fit that into the setting design in a clean way. I will consider doing it if I can find some clean solution. I might need to redesign the setting GUI anyhow since using tabs might not be feasible in the future. I am in the process of adding effects for the notification popups, Alt-Tab (Coverflow/Timeline) and Panel tooltips, so the settings GUI is getting kinda packed.

rado84-6 months ago

It's good as an idea but still far from a useable variant - for me, at least: • panel blur can not be disabled (bc I don't need blur on the panel) • menu blur can not be enabled AT ALL - that's where I needed some blur to add to my semi-transparent theme (0.4 alpha color).

Kevin Langman-6 months ago

Panels effects can be disabled. Open the BlurCinnamon settings (System-settings->Extensions then click the "Configure" button before the BlurCinnamon list entry), on the General tab there is an option to disable panel effects, as well as an option to enable popup menu effects (which is disabled by default). What theme are you using? Not all themes work well with BlurCinnamon, it depends on how the theme decides to setup the panels/menus. BlurCinnamon attempts to override some theme settings to achieve transparency which is needed for the blurred element to be visible behind the panel/menu. But if the theme is using a background that is not one that BlurCinnamon is overriding then the effect will not be visible. If you are still having issues please open an issue in my Github https://github.com/klangman/BlurCinnamon so I can try and address the problem.

Juan-Lutz-8 months ago

Thank you for this beautiful extension. Something many were waiting for.

anik2k06-11 months ago

best applet. but it is under-rated

VictorVolt-11 months ago

nice extension, do you think it's possible for it to have some sort of hue/saturation option? like, if i have a transparent panel theme with blue outlines, wouldn't need the transparency effect but only a hue type of effect to change the outline colors of the theme. Also a brightness/contrast could also be interesting to make custom themes brighter or darker for panels and maybe for app themes aswell but that might be too far of a stretch, i mean my suggestions might be already too far of a stretch for a extension, but i'm curious to see if it is a possibility

Kevin Langman-11 months ago

I think it a good idea, but I think this type of feature belongs in it's own extension. This extension only modifies the theme settings so that the background effects are visible. We should have some extension that allows you to customise a theme. The other option is to use a theme editor and make a revision of the theme with the outline color changes applied.

Eugene-11 months ago

A great extension that linux mint was sorely missing. If we could add separate "dimming overlay color" settings for the light and dark themes, it would be great.

Kevin Langman-11 months ago

Glad to hear you think it. So you are looking for two setting for the "color overlay" and for the extension to automatically switch which one if active based on if the system is using a light or dark theme?

EverydayLolicon-1 year ago

Really like this addon, but for some reason popup menus show my wallpaper and not what's behind them, in an older version it worked like I would expect it to and didn't show the wallpaper, panel still works well though, is this a bug?

Kevin Langman-1 year ago

Glad you like the extension. In the 1st version there were no Applet popup menu effects at all so they would look like what your theme defines. In version 1.2.0 I added the ability to apply effects to just the Main Menu applet. With version 1.3.0 it can apply effects to all applet popup menus. At all times the Main Menu and applets popup menu effects were disabled by default so you had to go to the setting to enable it. If you perfer the Popup menus to have no effects then go to BlurCinnamon settings and disable the "Popup menus" option under the General tab. Hope this helps.

Michael Freeman-1 year ago

Absolutely beautiful so far, and a feature that Cinnamon has been missing for way too long! One thing I noticed (and I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done, but I thought I'd let you know) is that the applet menu blur seems to work perfect with everything except Cinnamenu. That applet wants to retain the theme default for some reason.

Kevin Langman-9 months ago

Finally had some time to look into the Cinnamenu issue a bit more. See this link for more info... https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon-spices-extensions/issues/873

Kevin Langman-1 year ago

Ya, Cinnamenu is a bit different in how to opens, making it harder to intercept the open action. I mentioned this issue in the "Limitations" section above. I didn't spend much time yet on getting Cinnamenu to work, but I hope I can get it work with a bit more work.

angelotux-1 year ago

wonderful extension

LouitLA-1 year ago

Thanks for the extension! This is a must-have tweak for me