Even when idle top reports gnome-shell using 50%-95% CPU. I had this problem previously, which I solved by removing various extensions, but now it’s happening again and hindering my system’s usability.
Is there any way to see what is making gnome-shell so suddenly resource hungry?
Removing outdated/unmaintained extensions would be a start. You may create a new “test” user account and see if problem persists, that means it’s a package-level problem and needs dev attention.
Any hints for conveniently making a list of such extensions? Right now my plan would be to go through pamac and going through my AUR packages.
if you installed extensions from various sources (AUR, gnome extension website, pamac, github/gitlab etc.) then, nah
How many extensions do you have? More the merrier messier.
All the installed extensions should be in 2 folders (at least on my system they are) and this command lists them all: ls -1 /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions > allextentions && ls -1 ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions >> allextentions and put them in a file allextentions for reference.
If you have firefox there is the options of installing the gnome -shell integration add-on and it will list the installed extensions and allows the option to manage the user space extentions