A GNOME Shell extension that adds Tailscale VPN controls directly to your Quick Settings panel for seamless network management.

This extension provides a convenient Quick Settings toggle for managing your Tailscale VPN connection directly from the GNOME Shell system menu. No need to open a terminal or separate application — control your Tailscale connection with a single click.

This project is a continuation and modernisation of joaophi/tailscale-gnome-qs, which is no longer actively maintained. Development has continued here to ensure compatibility with current GNOME Shell versions and to incorporate community fixes and improvements.

• Quick Toggle — Enable/disable Tailscale directly from the Quick Settings panel
• Exit Nodes — Select and disconnect exit nodes, including Mullvad support with country flag display
• Multi-Account — Switch between multiple Tailscale accounts (profiles)
• Status Indicator — Visual indication of your Tailscale connection status
• Lightweight — Minimal resource usage and system impact
• Native Integration — Seamlessly integrates with GNOME Shell's design language

• GNOME Shell 45 or newer
• Tailscale installed and configured on your system
• User configured as Tailscale operator (see Configuration below)

Install directly from GNOME Extensions — simply visit the page and toggle the switch to install.

After cloning the repository, install build dependencies for your distro then run make build && make install.

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt update && sudo apt install make gettext gnome-shell

Fedora/RHEL

sudo dnf install make gettext gnome-shell

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S make gettext gnome-shell

Then build and install:

git clone https://github.com/tailscale-qs/tailscale-gnome-qs.git
cd tailscale-gnome-qs
make build
make install

After installation you may need to either log out and back in, or restart GNOME Shell by pressing Alt+F2, typing r, and pressing Enter (X11 only). Then enable the extension:

gnome-extensions enable tailscale-gnome-qs@tailscale-qs.github.io

For the extension to work properly, configure your user as a Tailscale operator. This allows control of Tailscale without requiring root privileges for every operation:

sudo tailscale set --operator=$USER

1. Click on the Quick Settings panel (top-right corner of your screen)
2. Look for the Tailscale toggle
3. Click to connect/disconnect from your Tailscale network

Extension not appearing

• Ensure the extension is enabled: gnome-extensions list --enabled
• Check GNOME Shell version compatibility: gnome-shell --version
• Review extension logs: journalctl -f -o cat /usr/bin/gnome-shell

Permission errors

• Verify operator status: tailscale status
• Re-run the operator configuration: sudo tailscale set --operator=$USER
• Log out and back in to refresh permissions

Extension crashes GNOME Shell

• Disable the extension: gnome-extensions disable tailscale-gnome-qs@tailscale-qs.github.io
• Check compatibility with your GNOME Shell version
• Report the issue on GitHub

Contributions are welcome — bug reports, feature requests, and code contributions alike.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name
3. Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
4. Push to your fork: git push origin feature/your-feature-name
5. Open a Pull Request against the develop branch

Development setup:

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/tailscale-gnome-qs.git
cd tailscale-gnome-qs
make build
make install

• Original Author: joaophi — created the original tailscale-gnome-qs extension
• Mullvad improvements: abn
• See CONTRIBUTORS.md for a full list of contributors

• Bug Reports: GitHub Issues
• Tailscale Docs: tailscale.com/kb

GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE for details.

This extension is not officially affiliated with Tailscale Inc. It is a community-maintained project.