Avant Window Navigator (Awn) is a Mac OS X like panel for the GNOME Desktop written in C. In addition to launchers that can be dragged onto the bar, it features a taskbar that behaves similarly to the Mac OS X dock. The window navigator uses the composite extension for transparency and other effects.
It can be used for anything from the launching of simple programs to complex multi-tasking. This application compares to The Mac OS X dock in functionality, allowing the user to specify its position on the screen.
The look and feel are fully customizable, and theming support is also available.
Key Features
- Based on the workspace concept, but the space is two dimensional.
- Customise the bar:
- Choose between two ‘engines’:
- Glass engine. All the gradients can be changed to your taste
- Pattern engine.
- The border & internal border colours can be changed.
- The ‘glow’ (the background of an active window icon) can be changed, to be as simple or as lavish as you need.
- Choose between sharp or rounded corners.
- Choose the text & shadow colour of the window title text.
- Choose between two ‘engines’:
- Each time you move to a new, unvisited workspace, a terminal window is automatically launched, emulating TTYs’ behavior.
- Delete an entire workspace, killing all the window launched in it.
- Delete an entire dimension, deleting all the residing workspaces.
- Order windows on the fly.
- Proc-like interface.
- Launchers.
- Task lists.
- Plugins:
- Music software: Audacious, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Exaile, Quod Libet, and Amarok.
- Internet software: Deluge,Pidgin, XChat, and Epiphany.
- Awn Extras provides a number of important applets (not unlike the panel applets for GNOME and Xfce) in a single package, along with a number of plugins that allow applications to better interface with Awn’s task manager. These applets range from a Trash applet to fancy workspace switcher.
Website: github.com/p12tic/awn
Support:
Developer: Neil Jagdish Patel, haytjes, Miika-Petteri Matikainen, Anthony Arobone, Ryan Rushton, Michal Hruby, Julien Lavergne, Mark Lee, Rodney Cryderman
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

Awn is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Docks | |
|---|---|
| Latte | Based on plasma frameworks offering elegance and beauty |
| Plank Reloaded | Lightweight, customizable Linux dock |
| Crystal Dock | Cool desktop panel with parabolic zooming effect for KDE Plasma |
| tint2 | Simple and light open source taskbar |
| Simdock | Fast and customizable dockbar |
| Plank | Simple dock with basic functionality |
| Cairo-Dock | Light and eye-candy dock to launch your programs |
| xpybar | Highly extensible minimalistic dock panel |
| DDE Dock | Dock of Deepin Desktop Environment |
| KSmoothDock | Desktop panel with parabolic zooming effect for KDE Plasma 5 |
| Docky | Elegant, powerful, clean dock |
| Avant Window Navigator | Mac OS X like panel for GNOME |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Related Software
| GUI Application Launchers | |
|---|---|
| Ulauncher | Fast application launcher written in Python |
| Vicinae | Native launcher for your desktop — built with C++ and Qt |
| Albert | Desktop agnostic launcher, inspired by OSX’ Alfred launcher |
| Walker | Customizable application launcher built with GTK4 and Rust |
| Kupfer | Fast and lightweight desktop summoner/launcher |
| Cerebro | A launcher to improve your productivity and efficiency |
| Hamr | Fast, extensible desktop launcher |
| dmenu | Fast and lightweight dynamic menu |
| fuzzel | Application launcher for wlroots based Wayland compositors |
| lxqt-runner | LXQt application launcher |
| Kickoff | Heavily inspired by rofi |
| Kando | Pie menu to launch applications, simulate hotkeys, open URLs |
| gravel | Basic FLTK UI |
| zlaunch | Application launcher / window switcher for Wayland |
| Catapult | Launch apps, open files and do basic calculation |
| rofi | Window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement |
| Onagre | General purpose application launcher for X and Wayland |
| Raffi | Designed to sit on top of Fuzze |
| bashrun2 | Launch applications from interactive bash sessions |
| rlaunch | Fast, lightweight and modern application launcher for X11 |
| rough | GTK based application launcher |
| Marvin | Uses different modules to provide different functionalities |
| Launchy | Utility designed to help users forget about the application menu |
| Vanta | Scriptable application launcher and command palette for Wayland |
| Synapse | Semantic graphical launcher written in Vala |
| Proslenkey | Lightweight GTK4 application launcher for Wayland |
| MRunner | Keyboard-first application runner |
| Gnome-Pie | Circular application launcher made of several pies |
| Avant Window Navigator | OS X like panel for the GNOME Desktop |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

