Disable Global Menu on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy

Last updated: October 23, 2013

This tutorial shows how to disable the global menu, so that each application having its own menu bar on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy.

Before:

global menu unity

After:

To do it, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to disable it.

sudo apt-get remove indicator-appmenu

Restart your computer to apply the changes.

For Firefox, go to Tools –> Add-ons –> Extensions and disable ‘Global Menu Bar integration’.

Enjoy!

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7 responses to Disable Global Menu on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy

  1. Cash Advance Loan July 26, 2013 at 11:10 pm

    salubrious learn more

  2. This works in 13.04, but not in 13.10.

  3. As Soured said, doesn’t work in 13.10.

    The apt-get autoremove command seems to run fine except for this:

    Note, selecting ‘unity-gtk2-module’ instead of ‘appmenu-gtk’
    Note, selecting ‘unity-gtk3-module’ instead of ‘appmenu-gtk3’
    Package ‘appmenu-qt’ is not installed, so not removed

    Also, there are no “Global menu bar integration” plugin in Firefox anymore.

    Not sure if it’s safe to autoremove unity-gtk2 and 3?

    • Also, after removing these packages the unity and gnome tweak tools both misbehave, obviously this is something that shouldn’t have been changed.

      $ gnome-tweak-tool
      WARNING : Shell not installed or running
      WARNING : Error detecting shell
      Traceback (most recent call last):
      File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_shell_extensions.py”, line 199, in __init__
      raise Exception(“Shell not running or DBus service not available”)
      Exception: Shell not running or DBus service not available
      INFO : GSettings missing key org.gnome.nautilus.desktop (key computer-icon-visible)
      WARNING : Shell not running
      None
      INFO : GSettings missing key org.gnome.mutter (key workspaces-only-on-primary)
      Segmentation fault (core dumped)

      • Post updated!

        The new method works in Ubuntu 13.10, but only partially… some of windows will have no access to menus at all. Better to adjust on a per app basis thru setting an env in the app’s .desktop (& or quicklist entry

        Ex.’s –
        gedit
        Code:
        Exec=env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= gedit %U
        vlc( all qt4 apps
        Code:
        Exec=env QT_X11_NO_NATIVE_MENUBAR=1 vlc %U

  4. Worked great Ubuntu 13.10. Didn’t have to change any Firefox settings.