Enable Global Menu in Elementary OS Luna

Last updated: February 10, 2014

Want to try the Ubuntu Unity-Style Global Menu in Elementary OS Luna? Well, it’s easy to accomplish this via super wingpanel.

Super Wingpanel, wingpanel from the elementaryos project with some additional features:

  • auto hide / intellihide / intellislim
  • slim mode a la wingpanel-slim

First take a look at the result:

global menu in elementary os Luna

NOTE: Super Wingpanel is not stable at the moment, use it at your own risk!

To install this tool, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:heathbar/super-wingpanel-daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install super-wingpanel

To get it working, indicator-appmenu and dconf-tools are needed. Install them via:

sudo apt-get install indicator-appmenu dconf-tools

To enable Global Menu:

1. Open dconf Editor from the Applications menu.

2. Navigate to org -> pantheon -> cerbere, enable appmenu and super wingpanel by changing the value of monitored-process to:

[‘plank’, ‘slingshot-launcher –silent’, ‘env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 super-wingpanel’]

3. Navigate to org -> pantheon -> desktop -> super-wingpanel, change the value of blacklist to:

[”]

Log out and back in. Done.

Twitter

I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via ubuntuhandbook1@gmail.com Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1

26 responses to Enable Global Menu in Elementary OS Luna

  1. Томица Кораћ February 1, 2014 at 8:22 am

    Just out of curiosity, why on Earth would anyone want to have Unity’s Global menu?

    • Here i am for example ;) Unity does not run with my closed nvidia drivers, but i need them because of i am a game developer. With ElementaryOS i have a lot of useful space, and it’s works fine with nVidia drivers.

    • I like Unity’s Global menu. I have a notebook with vertical space constraints, and older applications, such as eclipse really benefit from the Global menu.

      Using the same program in gnome3, with it’s already huge padding is terrible.

      Ideally I would use gnome3 and pantheon. And being able to do this with super wingpanel, for applications that aren’t get tuned for gnome3/pantheon would be ideal in my opinion.

  2. Ask Mac users about that ;) I like global menu because i have more useful vertical space on wide laptop screen.

    • Томица Кораћ February 2, 2014 at 1:27 pm

      I wouldn’t mind space-saving by integrating GUI elements in various ways, but a ‘global’ menu for an unmaximized windows is just plain mindless.

  3. Is there any way of having the indicator-synapse on the super-wingpanel ?
    Also, I get the application name all in CAPS right beside the menu. It’s not showing in the screens you provide and it looks horrible.

  4. This is… Was waiting for this for sooo long, even more desktop space for me ^_^

  5. I just installed this and it works, but…
    1 – The global menu is placed to the right od the clock instead of right next to the “Application Launcher”
    2 – The order of menu entries is reversed (e.g. it’s “Help, Tools, History, View, Edit, Files” instead of “Files, Edit, View, etc…”)

    How can I fix that?

    • I have also triedd to modify the “indicator-order” string in dconf editor but nothing seems to work.

  6. why my global menu is in right corner?
    http://i.imgur.com/Z7HpzRv.png

    • It was working fine for me but after an update it started looking like yours. I’ve let the author know in his blog as Ji m suggested.
      http://i.imgur.com/CKSXSNQ.png
      “http://www.heath-bar.com/blog/?p=714#comment-32590”

    • Same problem here with a inversed menu on the right of the clock.
      It happened when I enter this command to fix chromium button disposition :
      gconftool-2 –set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout –type string “:minimize,maximize,close”
      Before this the menu was correctly on the left of the screen.
      Can’t find yet how to fix it.

  7. Miquéias de Souza February 6, 2014 at 1:15 am

    someone managed to solve the menu on the right?

  8. I have followed this tutorial but this is not working, and It is just two steps.. :/

    • Did you try pr0n’s suggestion? Because the developer updates the PPA frequently, so I’m not sure if the latest one works.

      The developer has built two PPAs with the different versions of super-wingpanel: ppa:heathbar/super-wingpanel-daily and ppa:heathbar/super-wingpanel. Now I’m confused, don’t know which one will work. (The developer suggested the daily build PPA which contains the latest features.)

  9. If your globalmenus are in reverse look at this suggested bugfix…maybe it helps

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/super-wingpanel/+bug/1279186

  10. With super-wingpanel-daily bzr189 – the globalmenu moves to the right when switching windows.

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/super-wingpanel/+bug/1282743

    Ugly hack to hide empty menuitems:

    add to /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-3.0/apps.css:

    .composited-indicator.menuitem{
    padding:0;
    -GtkMenuItem-horizontal-padding:0;
    }

    • A hack is a hack be it ugly or beautiful, anyway your CSS snippet work pretty well for me

  11. Christoforos Giannakidis August 24, 2014 at 9:26 am

    Hi.
    How can i change the font weight in global menu for the name of the application only?

    • You can set the bold to normal. For example in AOS Nova, we have ours set to this:
      If you’re on eOS, then go to “usr/share/themes/elementaryos/gtk-3.0/apps.css”
      If you’re on AOS, then go to “/usr/share/themes/aos/gtk-3.0/apps.css”
      You can also specify the font type.
      So for example font: opensans; and then use font-weight: normal;

      /*********
      * Panel *
      ********/

      .panel {
      background-color: transparent;
      color: #fff;
      font-weight: normal; <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< was bold , now normal.
      font-size: 8px;
      text-shadow: none;
      icon-shadow: none;
      border-width: 0 0 1px 0;
      border-color: #000;
      }

      .panel .menu .menuitem {
      font-weight: normal; <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< still normal.
      }

  12. Hello.
    I’ve just installed superwingpanel. It is working, but i don’t have the menú entries (file, edit, view, etc) on the panel.
    Any idea about how to fix that?