Easy Gnome Shutdown in 1 Step
This is a simple method to create an icon on your Gnome desktop that will take you immediately to the Gnome Shutdown command. I created it for a senior citizen who had trouble navigating the default Shutdown menu.
Open letter to the Gnome Accessibility Team
Gnome is my favorite Linux desktop and I’ve been using it full-time for over twenty years. I really appreciate the single-click choice for “large type” and use it constantly. I submit, however, there is one type of user that is left out of the thought process when making Gnome more accessible and that is namely “people who don’t know what a computer is or does”. As an example, here is the instruction sheet I had to make for a senior citizen to shut down the computer.

I know it’s over-the-top for most people, but after spending a couple of years teaching someone what the power symbol is on the computer, it was hard for them not to keep clicking the TITLE of this dialog box. Furthermore, “Log out” and “Switch User” aren’t powering off the device, so the title is a misleading. Does it even need to be there? There is nothing to indicate which items are “clickable” until after you mouse over them. I would love to see an extension made that just puts a red power symbol box in the top bar for users that just want to turn on the computer, use the web browser, and turn off the computer.
AI actually helped me fix this
So I started asking Gemini AI about easy ways to shut down the computer and didn’t find anything existing. I then asked it to provide solutions and it first told me to create a launcher. After being reminded these are deprecated, the program came up with the following script you can leave on the desktop, make executable, and will bring you to the gnome shutdown box in a single step. I did not see a reference where it came from.
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Shutdown
Comment=Shuts down the system
Exec=gnome-session-quit --power-off
Icon=system-shutdown
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=System;
Paste this text into a TEXT editor and save it as “Shutdown.Desktop” in your Desktop directory (I think you can drag and drop it directly onto the Desktop too). Right-click on the file and change the permissions to “Allow executing as a program”. You can then have this user-friendly way to turn off the computer.

Remarks
This worked right away with Ubuntu 24.04.1. I could not get it to work in Debian 12 using Gnome 43.9. For those a little more tech-savvy, there is an existing Gnome extension called ~ “Bring out sub-menu of shutdown..” that I use, but right now it just lists a series of symbols that would not be easy for non-computer people to remember.
I hope this helps simplify using a computer for some people. Linux really has come a long way in being user friendly for the most part (looking at whoever stole the “paste” command here). There are so many things we do with a web browser now that the operating system becomes less and less important. I’ve used the free Libreoffice software for home use for over twenty years. More tips on using Linux are in the Computer category of my blog.