Cfrgtkky

The visual/logical connection between the Activities button on the top bar and the Applications button on the desktop dock is slightly confusing to newcomers to Gnome 3 in Ubuntu given that the dock is installed by default and you're not presented with the "vanilla" Gnome 3 workflow.

If you click on the Applications toggle button in the dock, why does the Activities button in the top bar become selected as indicated by the underline? But... if you select the Activities button there's no apparent connection to the Applications toggle button... odd, right?

I now happen to run the more traditional Gnome 3 workflow myself in Ubuntu but I've seen this question asked elsewhere and wanted to share what took me personally quite a bit of digging to initially understand coming from Unity. Without really knowing the history of Gnome 3 the connection is a bit odd.

Gnome 3 began life without a "favorite applications" launcher on the desktop itself. There was simply the Activities overlay that you could select from the left of the top bar. Once inside this overlay there were two toggle buttons to then change overlay modes: Windows and Applications. The Windows mode presented all the current applications that were open and running, and the Applications mode provided access to a complete inventory of all installed applications. Additionally, there was a "favorite applications" launcher inside this overlay that was the "dash."

At Gnome 3.6, the dual toggle button Windows/Applications mode selector was changed. The button to access the Applications mode was moved into the bottom of the dash as its own toggle button that most know well. This was purportedly to improve and simpify the layout of the Windows mode according to official release notes. To that end, this redesign permitted the removal of the explicit Windows mode button. It was now just implied that you were always taken to the Windows mode of the Activities overlay first.

Generally speaking, some folks weren't pleased that they didn't have a set of "favorite applications" or a launcher bar by default on the desktop.. With support for shell extensions in play, several options eventually became available. Ubuntu has adopted a custom variant of Dash to Dock.

This shell extension moved the dash from inside the Activities overlay to the desktop. In doing so, this somewhat obfuscated the orginal Gnome 3 workflow and the fact that there were technically still two Activities modes -- Windows and Applications. So much so still, that even though the dash is now "docked" on the desktop, the Applications button within it is still linked to the Activities overlay from a code standpoint. So when you toggle the Applications button you're actually entering the Applications mode of the Activities overlay. When you select the Activities button on the top bar you are entering the Windows mode of the Activities overlay.