Hi, I am looking for a way to add an applications menu to Plank. Is this possible in Budgie? I have tried it with the Classicmenu-Indicator from Ubuntu, but I can’t find a way to access the preferences.
Think this might be available if you use docky instead of plank - worth investigating I would suggest
sudo apt install dockyWill try. Many thanks for the suggestion.
There is an applications menu available in plank.
Hold down and right click anywhere on the dock
Select “Preferences->Docklets” and pull the Applications icon on to the dock.
Should have said
Hold down Control and right click anywhere on the dock
Select “Preferences->Docklets” and pull the Applications icon on to the dock.
interesting … I don’t have such an icon listed in my Docklets - just Clippy, Clock, CPU Monitor, Desktop and Trash
That’s odd. If you hold down the key and right click on one of the plank icons, do you get a small menu which includes Preferences?
yes - and via the menu - Plank Preferences
OK finally identified the problem. You need to add a PPA. Just open a terminal and enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/docky.
sudo apt upgrade
If you are adding that PPA, then you are using Docky, not Plank. The two are separately developed projects. I believe, and someone can correct me, that Plank is an offshoot from Docky.
When I used Docky, about a year or so ago, it had a huge memory leak. A forum post on the topic recommended that I switch to Plank and after doing so, never had an issue. Unfortunately though for the OP’s purpose, Plank does not include an application menu icon, which is kind of odd.
The PPA is for Docky and Plank. I would draw your attention to the Package For Bionic Beaver, which is labelled “plank - 0.11.4+git20180707.0a842b45-0ubuntu1~18.04~ricotz1”
The packages modified are
libplank-common Library to build an elegant, simple, clean dock (shared files)
libplank-dev Library to build an elegant, simple, clean dock (development files)
libplank-doc Library to build an elegant, simple, clean dock (documentation)
libplank1 Library to build an elegant, simple, clean dock
libplank1-dbgsym debug symbols for libplank1
plank Elegant, simple, clean dock
plank-dbgsym debug symbols for plank
So its 'definitely an update For Plank
With the PPA installed, to confirm that what I am running is Plank (not Docky), I held down Control and right clicked on the dock and selected “About”. The icon showed :
“plank
0.11.4.24-0a84
Development
Plank. Stupidly simple.”
This version of plank includes an option to add an Applications Docklet.
So I hope this clears up any confusion.
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« Plank » is a part of the Docky project.
I have managed (with the special help of this community) to install the SlingsWarm full-screen launcher and given it a nice shortcut to the Plank dock … looks cool …
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I actually created a lightweight deb installer to do this, check out my repo here https://github.com/milan102/Ubuntu-Launchpad
The installation instructions are in the github README. The program is a simple shell script that invokes the keyboard shortcut for showing applications (Super + A).
This is very useful for adding a shortcut to a Plank (or similar) dock
Cool app … I tried it today. Only that on Ubuntu Budgie the script doesn’t launch Launchpad, but the Raven sidebar.
Is this intended?
Would it be possible to have Launchpad on Budgie? The idea is superb.
Cool thing, I 'm already using the Classic Menu Indicator, that, when installed, shows up in the AppIndicator Applet.
One thing I find a disadvantage in all Launchers is that the applications are in categories where they are not easy to find. like “Network Settings” is the category “System Tools”, sub-category “Preferences”.
I tried moving apps to personalized categories with Alacarte, what was was a really tedious procedure, because you have to click a thousand times, only to see on the next login the apps had miraculously moved themselves back to their original category, so I gave up on that.
I would like to be able to move the apps easily around between categories, like a sort of drag-and-drop function, and maybe even be able to create new folders or rename, or hide existing ones, right from inside the launcher.
Another thing is that I personally find the full screen Gnome Launcher just too beautiful. It is basically the only one thing that I really miss from Gnome. For now, I am using the Sling swarm launcher, what kind of fills the gap, but the aesthetics don’t come close.
For a fix, I would be inclined to do the hack myself and make the Gnome Launcher work on Budgie, but I would need a little bump start on that. Is the code of the Gnome Launcher open source? Can it be downloaded somewhere? Could it be made usable for Budgie? What would it take? Could the code from the Budgie Menu be used?
Gnome launcher is I think written in gnome script … gnomes version of javascript. So it only works on gnome shell and is not portable to any other desktop environment
So my suggestion would be to fork slingswarm and dress it up in the way you think works for your workflow.
Another way to have a dock with an application menu is to create a second panel in Budgie Desktop Settings.
In the Applet area, add the Budgie Menu and the Icon List applets to the panel.
In the Panel area, turn on Dock Mode, set Automatically Hide to Automatic, and set Position, Transparency, and Size to your taste.
Just to be perfect, you can go back to the Applet Panel and move the two applets to the center position.
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