When gnome-shell crashes, it display a window fullscreen with buttons to disable extensions and log-out. There is no way to access running applications and save unfinished work, or try to delay log out.

In the old days, when such a thing happened and the windows were left without decorations, I tried to run a terminal (using a panel icon for example) and execute a window manager by typing "metacity&". I could then access my windows and do the necessary to save my work before restarting the session. Now, it's no longer possible.

Ideally, there should be a button that allows to return to a broken session, but working just enough to save the work in progress. For example, we could display a button "Try to go continue running" that would run the fallback-mode window manager (mutter, isn't it?) and let the user access its windows. The uiser would then log out at will, not just when forced.

I think it would also be possible to restart the whole gnome-shell, but I suppose the error message is displayed after few failed attempts. We could nevertheless have something like: "We tried to restart gnome-shell 5 times, but it failed. You could nevertheless try to restart it a last time" followed by a "Restart" button.

To maximize the chances at running gnome-shell, we could delay the restarts by 1 second each time.

I hate being left out without options when I know I could fix things manually.

Mildred