Friday, April 15, 2011

Gnome 3 Massive Title Bar

Seems they were planning on doing something with the title bar so made it frigging HUGE!   This might be ok on a 22" monitor but netbooks this will be an issue.   Most of the space is controlled in the main theme XML file.  So to make much much smaller run:


  • Open a terminal window
  • sudo sed -i "/title_vertical_pad/s/value=\"[0-9]\{1,2\}\"/value=\"0\"/g" /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml
  • Close terminal window
  • Hit ALT-F2
  • type restart 
  • hit enter
This will change the title_vertical_pad from 14 (on normal font size) to 0.  Then restart the gnome-shell without you having to log-in/out or lose what your working on.

There's talk about creating a netbook theme but until they do the above will do the trick.
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23 comments:

  1. CMay 7, 2011 at 3:23 AM

    Thanks, this is one of the biggest problems with gnome 3 and you have solved it for me.

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  2. UnknownOctober 13, 2011 at 4:11 PM

    Thank you so much for sharing this !!! :)
    I personally use XFCE + Compiz + KDE4 Window Decorator (since Compiz 0.9.5 does not support Emerald themes anymore) but your tip helped me on slimming down the title bar on clients laptop. Already saved it on my google docs !

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  3. prozacFebruary 8, 2012 at 11:29 PM

    This is just what I needed. Many thanx!!

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  4. Tam Vo MinhMarch 17, 2012 at 10:35 PM

    Thanks for clear article.

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  5. UnknownMarch 24, 2012 at 8:18 AM

    thankyou

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  6. khizApril 29, 2012 at 1:04 PM

    it didnt work for me :( plz help. could it be because im on 12.04

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  7. SawRubAugust 26, 2012 at 11:28 PM

    thanks for solving this. for me.

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  8. gtavkelishviliMay 26, 2013 at 8:24 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  9. gtavkelishviliMay 26, 2013 at 8:38 AM

    Thanks Michael,

    Works on Ubuntu 13.04 + GNOME Shell 3.8.2.

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownNovember 3, 2013 at 2:27 PM

    Thanks, works on Fedora 19 too.

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  11. sarashinaiNovember 20, 2013 at 9:55 PM

    THANK YOU!

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  12. Jan KrálJanuary 15, 2014 at 10:21 PM

    Many thanks! Works also on Fedora 20 with GNOME Shell 3.10.2.1

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  13. UnknownJanuary 20, 2014 at 10:04 AM

    Excelent! Worked on Ubuntu 13.10 with GNOME Shell 3.10.2.1

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  14. UnknownFebruary 4, 2014 at 3:56 AM

    Works well enough, thanks. However makes close button X look like dot (at least on Fedora 20). Any idea how to fix?

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    Replies
    1. AnonymousMarch 21, 2014 at 6:58 PM

      Best I found was to edit "/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml" and change all the values of "title_vertical_pad" to "2", except the one that has the comment saying it has to be one smaller (make that "1"), and then set the value of "D_icons_shrink" to "3", and "D_icons_grow" to "3".
      This doesn't save quite as much space as the method in the original post, but it does leave you with buttons that still look right.

      Delete
    2. DarekApril 26, 2014 at 7:35 AM

      sudo sed -i "/title_vertical_pad/s/value=\"[0-9]\{1,2\}\"/value=\"5\"/g" /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml

      Delete
    3. PaulieFebruary 5, 2015 at 5:24 PM

      I had the same problem ("X" looks like a dot) in Arch Linux. I think it looks good with title_vertical_pad=0 as long as D_icons_grow=3.

      Delete
  15. MadCowDecember 27, 2014 at 7:15 AM

    Thanks for publishing this! I allways go to this page whenever I do a clean install. It does turn the close button into a dot, but since they threw out the minimize/maximum buttons it's something I can live with... rather then those ridiculously large borders!

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  16. JanusDecember 28, 2014 at 10:00 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  17. JanusDecember 28, 2014 at 10:02 AM

    Isn't it much easier to type 'gsettings' command into terminal?!
    $ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences titlebar-font 'OpenSymbol Bold 8'

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  18. ersatzFebruary 8, 2015 at 12:37 PM

    Another thank you! Many of us clearly agree with the sentiment expressed in the title of your post. But we must also be grateful for the Gnome team's great work creating an interface we can all fine tune to our own preferences. Personally I chose padding with 6 pixels ( sudo sed -i "/title_vertical_pad/s/value=\"[0-9]\{1,2\}\"/value=\"6\"/g" /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml ) and then used gnome-tweak-tool to set the Windows Titles font (DejaVu Sans Book 9) and to select a Windows theme which provided appropriately scaled icons (I chose Esco, there are many). I am running on Ubuntu 14.10 / Gnome 3.14.1

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  19. UnknownMay 4, 2016 at 11:48 AM

    Thanks a lot. It worked on Debian 8

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  20. XidiusJune 6, 2016 at 11:15 PM

    Now all of the font keeps blurring like it's going in and out of focus. How do I get rid of this theme? It has messed everything up.

    ReplyDelete

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