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Jorge Castro
Asked: 2010-12-16 09:51:46 +0800 CST

How do I reset my Unity configuration?

  • 772

I've been messing around with Unity and broke something, how do I "start over"?

unity

12 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The following command does not work on newer distributions (as the reply is ERROR: the reset option is now deprecated).

    For 12.04 and older

    The simplest way is to hit "open a Terminal" or hit Alt-F2 and run the command:

    unity --reset
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  2. For 12.10 - 13.04

    I, along with jokerdino and amithkk have created a python script that cleanly resets Unity for Quantal and above.

    It is hosted on github at https://github.com/phanimahesh/unity-revamp

    The script is now bundled with Unity Tweak Tool. You can install it using

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freyja-dev/unity-tweak-tool-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

    For 13.10 & 14.04

    sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

    To reset Unity, do

    unity-tweak-tool --reset-unity

    Note - if this does not resolve your Unity issues then the following Q&A may apply to you:

    What happens behind the scenes?

    Simple. We chase each individual setting that Unity uses, and reset them to their default values, and then reload unity to apply changes. Ah yes, we also kill Unity and compiz before we start, since it is known to get tricky if we change settings under compiz's nose.

    Why is this better compared to using dconf-editor or dconf reset ?

    • Didier Roche (didrocks), the author of unity python wrapper says dconf reset does not work in all cases.
    • The consensus among Unity developers is that the settings be modified using Gsettings instead of dconf directly.

    What exactly is dconf ?

    A little history

    • The configuration settings were managed by gconf earlier.
    • Gnome provides Gsettings as a replacement for gconf.
    • Gsettings is a high level api that manipulates the settings stored in a backend.
    • Unity stores its settings in the backend dconf since it can be loaded much faster than gconf.
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  3. As Kees said, running unity --reset will reset all of the launcher options, but it won't remove your custom favorites. To also remove any launchers you've added to the launcher, run 

    unity --reset-icons

    Or manually by: 

    gsettings reset com.canonical.Unity.Launcher favorites

    I would recommend running the gsettings command before unity --reset, so that you won't have to restart unity for the gsettings key reset to take effect.

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  4. Try to do this:

    1. Login into Ubuntu
    2. Open a terminal by hitting Ctrl + Alt + T

    3. Insert and run this commands:

      gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1
unity --reset

    4. Restart, this should work.

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  5. For Ubuntu 12.10 (Revised, again)

    OK, here it is. You can use 'dconf reset' as previously outlined and will do exactly what 'unity --reset' used to do.

    dconf reset -f /org/compiz/

    Then restart:

    compiz --replace & disown

    Apparently it would actually be better to stop compiz before using the 'dconf reset'. Which I'm currently working on.

    You can also look at the settings you have:

    dconf dump /org/compiz/

    To reset the unity icons you can still use

    unity --reset-icons

    This information is from a variety of sources, after much googling.

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  6. Install ubuntu tweak. The beauty of ubuntu tweak is that you can save desktop and application settings and restore after you messed something up. It also has a function to go back to original settings.

    enter image description here

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  7. If you've messed with the indicators and need to reset those see this question:

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  8. Sometimes people accidentally turn off the Unity plugin or setting an unsupported option in CCSM can cause it to break.

    You can turn it back on by following these directions:

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  9. For 12.10 — 13.04 [maybe older]

    I use this workaround to reset the unity configuration. But with Unity, it resets all configurations such as the custom wallpaper, themes, icon themes etc.

    1. Delete the user specific dconf database file:

        rm ~/.config/dconf/user

    2. Then Logout and Login again.

    IMPORTANT! Be sure that you BACKUP this file, because you lose ALL Unity's settings and switch to default!

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  10. For 11.10 and later

    From http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Unity/FAQ

    cd ~; rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity .compiz-1 .config/compiz-1 .config/dconf
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