I used to be a big fan of GNOME the way it got out of my way when I didn’t need it and no icons in the bottom to take up desktop space. But the top bar just seems so… useless. It holds a few useful icons in the right side (and you can get extensions to add more) but other than this, it’s just taking up space. After a trip past Xfce I’m now on KDE with the bar in the top.
Have I missed anything about the top bar in GNOME Desktop?
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?)