Ubuntu – Why don’t the quicklists appear when I use Unity 2D

11.04quicklistsunity-2d

For reference, I'm currently using Ubuntu 11.04 running on an Asus EeePC 1001HA, running Unity-2D.

I've been trying to add Quicklists into my Unity Launcher, following instructions from this AskUbuntu question. So what I do is I:

  • Copy the requested *.desktop file from /usr/share/applications/ to ~/.local/share/applications/.
  • Make my edits.
  • Logout and login again to reflect the new changes.

This doesn't work — the quicklists doesn't appear when I right-click them.

What I do next is…

  • Open Nautilus, and find the *.desktop file.
  • Right-click the Launcher icon I want to replace, and select "Remove From Launcher".
  • Drag the *.desktop files I want to use on launcher directly.

The icon appears, but the quicklist doesn't, when I right-click the icon. This persists even after restarts.

As an example, here's my google-chrome.desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Google Chrome
# Only KDE 4 seems to use GenericName, so we reuse the KDE strings.
# From Ubuntu's language-pack-kde-XX-base packages, version 9.04-20090413.
GenericName=Web Browser
# Not translated in KDE, from Epiphany 2.26.1-0ubuntu1.
GenericName[fil]=Web Browser
# Gnome and KDE 3 uses Comment.
Comment=Access the Internet
Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity
Terminal=false
Icon=google-chrome
Type=Application
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewWindow;Incognito;

[NewWindow Shortcut Group]
Name=New Window
Exec=google-chrome
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Incognito Shortcut Group]
Name=New incognito window
Exec=google-chrome --incognito
TargetEnvironment=Unity

I definitely know that dragging the *.desktop file to the Launcher works — if I change the exec directive to include --incognito, the browser does launch in incognito mode.

But for some strange reason the quicklist doesn't appear. Is this there an issue with how my Unity-2D is set up, or aren't quicklists supported by Unity-2D?

Best Answer

I was able to get this fix on 11.04 by using the daily unity-2d updates ppa and then running

unity --replace
from an alt-F2 prompt.