For me the right balance is installing i3 on a system with GNOME installed as well. I get all the GNOME apps working well together, but my window manager looks

For me the right balance is installing i3 on a system with GNOME installed as well. I get all the GNOME apps working well together, but my window manager looks and works the way I want it to. The only issue is configuring some of the GNOME apps (GNOME Online Accounts), where I have to convince Control Center that it's running under GNOME. Spawning the polkit agent and some of the other GNOME components works pretty well too. I just wish I could get the nice GNOME toolbar rather than my polybar (which I like, but took far too long to get working the way I wanted).