The bar is meant to be very minimal and not distracting.

It takes up space, sure, but it's close to the minimal height while still having easily readable time up top

Install an extension to hide it, I just tried this and it works for me: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/545/hide-top-bar/

You can install extensions by searching for it in the GNOME extensions manager. Once installed, you can edit the settings in the same place (I found I had to move off the window to another application before hiding was applied).

When I first started using GNOME the top bar was a bit off-putting but I got used to it TBH. It's not something I think about much nowadays.

However, you actually can move it to the side or to the bottom, and/or change it in other ways, with the dash-to-panel extension so definitely check that out if the top bar is bugging you https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

It's a nice place to put System-Monitor and fréon extensions

I don't use gnome and after switching to hyperland prefer not to have my compositor draw anything other than windows, so I can understand where you're coming from, but for gnome i'd want to keep it, namely cause its used for:

• System controls including power/logout are there as well as switching audio devices through an extension.
• clock
• system indicators (what else are you going to do about applications that unmap their window on close, like discord?)

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

It's why I favored Unity over Gnome back in the day. The titlebar/basic menu items and close/minimize/expand buttons integrated into the top bar was better. Ya it was probably a copy of MacOS/OSX. Damn good to me in my opinion though. Overall I like Gnome but I'm not sold on it long term. Someday I may try going full time on KDE again. Very likely popos 26.04 with Cosmic I'll try that out on my primary computer when it releases

For me Gnome and its GDK4 widgets feels like waisting space. Also many window title bars, button sizes and margins are way to big for me.

Top bar is the reason I do not use gnome. Not only it is a waste of space, it blocks the bar of maximised windows to go on screen edge where it would have been easier to grab or close.

If the top bar is set up as a menu bar, it could save space on the screen when multiple horizontally placed windows (without individual menu bars) are on the screen. Other than that, I think the general top bar stuff can just be in the bottom bar.

One solution is to replace the panel and dock with something like the Dash to Panel extension. It consolidates both into a single bar/dock/panel, is highly configurable and works very well. I wanted to get rid of the top panel for your reason as well as my muscle memory wanting the window controls of maximized windows to be on the top of my screen, not below a what essentially is a menu bar.

Yeah, it used to be a real space saver back in the Unity days were Window Controls and the Application Menu would merge onto the top bar when maximised but that's dead now, I don't get it either

I just use the "Just perfection" extension to hide to top bar and only make it visible in overview. It may sound annoying to have to use overwiew each time you want to see or interact with the top bar, but honestly for me it's not that often to make that 1 or 2 extra keypresses annoying. When you get used to it it saves a lot of space.

Agreed 100%

Twice as bad when you have a VM running Gnome open inside Gnome host machine.

There should be a simple Tweaks option "hide Gnome titlebar" or better yet a per-window preference setting

I personally use an extension to have the top bar hide when i maximize an app. I can't stand the wasted space either.

Gnome is designed to mimic MacOS, and the top bar is a fixture there. KDE is designed to mimic Windows, but also lets you configure way more than Windows ever did. You can put it on top in KDE and tell it to hide when not in use, if you want.