Ubuntu – How to get the shutdown & restart icon back in dash

12.04shutdownunityunity-dash

In Ubuntu 11.10 it was possible to type restart or shutdown in dash, so you could drag that icon in the left panel. Now in the new 12.04 this option has been deleted/removed.
Is there another way to get those icons back?

Best Answer

One solution is to create two .desktop files in your home folder ~/.local/share/applications with the 11.10 restart and shutdown equivalent files.

Create a text file named as below in the folder. Repeat this for the second desktop file.

Dash will automatically display restart and shutdown when you type these into dash.

step by step

Open a terminal and copy and paste the following one line at a time

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
gedit ~/.local/share/applications/indicator-session-restart.desktop

Copy and paste the text below for indicator-session-restart.desktop starting from [Desktop Entry] and ending X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=indicator-session

Save and close.

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/indicator-session-shutdown.desktop

Copy and paste the text below for indicator-session-shutdown.desktop starting from [Desktop Entry] and ending X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=indicator-session

Save and close.

indicator-session-restart.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Restart
TryExec=/usr/lib/indicator-session/gtk-logout-helper
Exec=/usr/lib/indicator-session/gtk-logout-helper --restart
Icon=system-restart
Terminal=false
Type=Application
OnlyShowIn=Unity;
Categories=System;
Version=1.0
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=indicator-session

indicator-session-shutdown.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Shut Down
TryExec=/usr/lib/indicator-session/gtk-logout-helper
Exec=/usr/lib/indicator-session/gtk-logout-helper --shutdown
Icon=system-shutdown
Terminal=false
Type=Application
OnlyShowIn=Unity;
Categories=System;
Version=1.0
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=indicator-session
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