Linux Mint Forums
Introduction
MATE’s panels are managed by the mate-panel command (started by mate-session), provided by the mate-panel package. They allow you to create one or more panels on your desktop from which you can launch applications, view information, etc.
Configuration
Much of the configuration data for MATE’s panels is kept in the dconf database, in particular under org.mate.panel . Often, if some aspect of configuration is not available through the UI itself, it will be available in dconf. A useful GUI tool for editing dconf is dconf-editor.
The general configuration for mate-panel is stored in org.mate.panel.general , while the configuration for each separate panel is kept in org.mate.panel.toplevels.panel_id , where panel_id is the name of the panel. Values in brackets listed after a dconf key below refer to the default value of that key.
Layouts
A panel layout (.layout file), contains the description of one or more panels, e.g. their size and orientation, including any configuration details that differ from a standard panel’s default configuration. It also contains details on the objects that the panels contain. The various layouts are stored in /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts and the one used by Mint is mint.layout , describing one panel at the bottom of the screen.
To change the default layout, (dconf) set general.default-layout (‘mint’), then reset the panel; or (command line) mate-panel —reset —layout mint , replacing the name of the layout parameter accordingly. The layouts provided with Mint are default, fedora, linuxmint, mageia, mint, opensuse, and ubuntu. Note that choosing a different default panel layout will lose any configuration that has been made to the previous one, including any extra panels that have been created.
- Add panel — (GUI) rclick on any panel->New Panel. Panels added in this way will be created as ‘toplevel-0’ etc.
- Remove panel: (GUI) rclick->Delete This Panel. Note that this is unavailable for the main panel. (dconf) Remove the panel’s objects from general.object-id-list , then remove the panel in general.toplevel-id-list . Note that only undertaking the last of these actions on its own will leave orphan objects. general.confirm-panel-remove (true) : a dialogue asking for confirmation will be displayed if the user tries to remove a panel.
- Expand/unexpand panel: (GUI) rclick->Properties->General->Expand. (dconf) expand (true). This only works if the panel is at the screen edge (a panel expanded in the middle of the screen will be automatically placed at the edge specified by orientation ). An unexpanded panel’s width/height depends on its contents.
- Move panel to edge on same screen: (GUI) rclick->Properties->General->Orientation, or drag as described below. (dconf) orientation (‘top’): ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘top’, ‘bottom’. In un-expanded mode, there is no difference between «top» and «bottom» (and «left»/right») — these both just mean that it is a horizontal panel, but the setting gives a hint e.g. as to which direction the panel menus should pop out.
- Move panel parallel on screen (needs to be non-expanded): (GUI) use the grab handle at either end of the panel to drag and drop. (dconf) xcentered (false), ycentered (false), x (0), x-right (-1), y (0), y-bottom (-1). if xcentered or ycentered is true, the related x/x-right or y/y-bottom are ignored and the panel grows on either side. If x-right is -1, it is ignored in favour of x (same for y-bottom/y). If x-right >0, x is ignored (same for y-bottom/y). Note that mate-panel gives ignored values to x, x-right, y, y-bottom even though a panel is expanded.
- Move panel to another X screen: (GUI) drag as above to another screen. (dconf) screen (0).
- Lock all panels: general.locked-down (false): no changes to the panel configuration are allowed (individual applets may need to be locked down separately). Restart mate-panel to put into effect.
- Resize panel height (width if vertical): (GUI) rclick->Properties->General->Size. (dconf) size (24). Note that panels determine a minimum size at runtime, based on font size and other indicators. The maximum size of a panel is ¼ of screen height (or width).
- Autohide panel (at the edge of the screen when the pointer leaves):
Enable: (GUI) rclick->Properties->General->Autohide. (dconf) auto-hide (false).
Pixels visible at the edge when hidden: auto-hide-size (1).
Hide delay (ms): hide-delay (300). Unhide delay (ms): unhide-delay (100).
Animate the hide/show action: enable_animations (true). This enables a gradual rather than an immediate hide/show of the panel.
Speed of animation: animation_speed (‘fast’) — ‘fast’, ‘medium’, ‘slow’. - Hide panel at the corner (using corner buttons):
Enable: (GUI) rclick->Properties->General->Show hide buttons. (dconf) enable-buttons (false).
Add arrows to buttons: (GUI) rclick->Properties->General->Arrows on hide buttons. (dconf) enable-arrows (true).
Animate the hide/show action: see Autohide. - Reset panels (to the default layout). Warning: this resets all panels to the initial default, removing any added panels or configuration. (GUI) r-click on any panel->Reset Panel. (command line) (i) mate-panel —reset; (ii) gsettings reset-recursively org.mate.panel.
- Restart mate-panel: pkill mate-panel .
- Other settings: The following settings also exist but appear to have no relevance to a standard Mint setup: general.enable-sni-support (false) — enables SNI (Status Notifier Item) support in the panel. name (») — doesn’t appear to do anything. monitor (0) — specifies the current monitor in a Xinerama setup. general.enable-animations (true) — doesn’t appear to have any effect on panels or be related to panel show/hide animation.
(GUI) rclick->Properties->Background. (dconf) type (‘none’).
— ‘none’: use the system theme (the default GTK+ widget background).
— ‘colour’: color (#ffffff): rgba background colour (includes transparency). opacity (6000; 65535 = opaque): this doesn’t appear to have any effect.
— ‘image’ (the image is repeated along the panel): image (»). fit (false): the image is scaled to fit the panel height/width. rotate (false): the image is rotated -90° on vertical panels. stretch (false): the image is stretched to the panel (the aspect ratio is not maintained) — this doesn’t appear to work).
Note that the use of a colour or image background may not by default fit well with e.g. Mint’s notification icons, date, & file browser icon which still use the theme background unless the following is added to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css (log out and in again to put into effect):
#PanelApplet button, #PanelApplet box.mintmenu
The above code can also include e.g. color: #ffffff for darker backgrounds etc. (this affects e.g. the icons for the menu, battery, update, volume, date, and the window list text) — alternatively, try different themes to find one that works.
Objects
Various types of objects can be added to MATE’s panels, namely one or more of the following: action, applet, drawer, launcher, menu, menu-bar, separator.
As an example, the default Mint layout come with (in order): Mint Menu (applet), Show Desktop (applet), separator, Caja (launcher), Terminal (launcher), Firefox (launcher), Window List (applet), Notification Area (applet), X App Status (applet), Clock (applet).
The configuration of each individual object (no matter which panel it belongs to) is stored in objects.object_id , where object_id is the unique name of the object. A list of all these object_id’s is also kept in general.object-id-list .
- Add object: rclick->Add to Panel. Note that objects added in this way are added as ‘object-n‘ (first n available) in objects .
- Remove object: (GUI) rclick->Remove from Panel. (dconf) find the object’s name in objects (e.g. object-0), then remove it from general.object-id-list . This will automatically remove the object in objects . Note that, on the contrary, beginning by recursively resetting the object in objects would leave the object_id in general.object-id-list , so this would require 2 steps instead of 1.
- Enable tooltips for objects: general.tooltips-enabled (true).
- locked (false): user may not move object without first unlocking. The Mint layout locks all its default objects.
- object-type (‘launcher’): type of object. ‘action’, ‘applet’, ‘drawer’, ‘launcher’, ‘menu’, ‘menu-bar’, ‘separator’. ‘applet’.
- panel-right_stick (false): interpret position of the object relative to the right (bottom if vertical) edge of panel.
- position (0): number of pixels from the left (top if vertical) panel edge. These aren’t strictly adhered to — mate-panel moves objects to make things look reasonable but maintains the relative positioning, e.g. 3 objects with positions 0, 5, 7 or 0, 10, 20 will normally be placed next to each other in the same way.
- toplevel-id (»): identifier of the top level panel which contains this object. The Mint layout’s objects all have this set to ‘bottom’.
- action-type (‘none’): ‘connect-server’, ‘force-quit’, ‘lock’, ‘logout’, ‘none’, ‘run’, ‘search’, ‘shutdown’.
- Connect to Server: calls caja-connect-server.
- Lock Screen: calls mate-screensaver (or x-screensaver if the former is not running).
- Log Out
- Search for Files: calls mate-search-tool.
- Force Quit: allows the user to click on a window and force the application providing that window to quit. general.disable-force-quit (false): the user is prevented from clicking on the Force Quit button.
- Shut Down
- Run Application: allows the user to run an application.
— Autocompletion: general.enable-autocompletion (true).
— Show known applications: general.enable-program-list (true): «Show list of known Applications» displayed in dialogue. general.show-program-list (true): list of known applications expanded.
— History: general.history-mate-run ([]): a history of the commands used, sorted descending by most recent. This is updated dynamically by the panel. Setting back to the default will zero out the list. general.history-max-size-mate-run (10): maximum size of history (0: disable history). general.history-reverse-mate-run (false): history displayed in reverse — this provides a consistent view for terminal users as the Up key will select the most recent entry.
- applet-iid (»): Implementation ID (IID). For example, the Mint Menu applet is ‘MintMenuAppletFactory::MintMenuApplet’.
- general.disabled-applets ([]): list of applet IIDs that the panel should ignore. Restart panel to put into effect.
- (Drivemount applet) drivemount.drivemount-checkmark-color (#003e00; green): colour of dot for mounted disks.
Notification Area applet
Also known as the system tray, this provides applications which use it with a means of providing icons that indicate their status, and includes for example the power, update, network and volume icons. There appears to be no way in MATE to tell the Notification Area applet which of these should be shown or hidden, and so usually you have to resort to the program itself in the hope that its configuration options include such a setting. These settings might be available by right-clicking on the application’s icon in the notification area. For the power manager icon, you can run mate-power-preferences .
- general.drawer-autoclose (true): the drawer is automatically closed when the user clicks a launcher in it.
- attached-toplevel-id (»): identifier of the panel to which the drawer is attached.
(the following also apply to menu objects) - use-custom-icon (false): use custom_icon as the custom icon for the button.
- custom-icon (»): location of the custom icon image file.
- tooltip (»): text to display in the tooltip.
- general.highlight-launchers-on-mouseover (true): launchers highlighted on mouseover.
- launcher-location (»): location of .desktop file describing launcher, e.g. Caja — ‘/usr/share/applications/caja-browser.desktop’.
- has-arrow (true): an arrow is drawn over the menu button icon. I haven’t seen this working.
- use-menu-path (false): use menu_path as the path from which the menu contents are constructed.
- menu-path (‘applications:/’): the path from which the menu contents are constructed.
- See also Drawers.
- show_icon , show-applications , show-places , show-desktop (all true): show the various sections of the menu bar. Hiding Applications also hides the icon beside it. show-desktop relates to the System section.