yeah, the over-crowdedness is only in the settings app, "normal" apps look fine

Unfortunately that's baked into all GTK apps nowadays. They merged the window bar and the window toolbar and now depending on how busy the app interface is you'll get an unholy mess in some apps.

Plus there's no longer any rhyme or reason to the layout even in apps without overlap. Previously you used to have a clear separation between window controls, app menu, and app toolbar. Now it's all jumbled.

I'm not even sure I understand what was the motivation since the screens and resolutions are getting bigger not smaller. But they still could have find ways to do it better, for example come up with a wrapping system that would put titlebar, menu and toolbar side by side (but still distinct) where the space allowed, and wrap them when it didn't.

Why is it worse? On desktop there are shortcuts and on touch there are gestures. Those buttons are a relict from the last millenium

the circles and whatnot, I didn't customize nothing there; minimal gnome shell install, activated the max/min buttons and moved them to the left. why I need them and need them there isn't important.