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For example, I ran Firefox and opened Askubuntu. Then opened some link in a new window. As a result, I have two windows of Firefox and one icon of Firefox on the launcher. I want to have an icon for each opened window.

How do I do?

Luis Alvarado
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Dimitrijj
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6 Answers6

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This is by no means a solution to what is asked but may be helpful

Research shows there are a lot of people asking and wanting this feature that is being asked about. There is bound to be a working solution. Searching related questions here on Ask Ubuntu gives reference to gnome environment or others which may give useful building blocks for working it out for Unity. May be time to accept there is not an easy solution for ungrouping windows in Unity launcher icon.

"Alt and `" (Button above Tab) switches windows of app as does "Super and w" All credit to Jo-Erland Skinstad who answered this Ask Ubuntu question. Depending on the mouse (if any)being used any keyboard shortcuts can be easily mapped to one button whether it be on mouse or keyboard which would give one click to show open windows and then one more left click to select which would make window switching slightly easier. To remap keys look here or xboxdrv would be another option- "It is also possible for xboxdrv to read input data directly from an event device, this allows the use of the configurability of xboxdrv on regular PC joysticks, keyboards and mice and thus lets xboxdrv serve a similar purpose as joy2key. See the option --evdev below for more information." as long as hotkey is not part of shortcut. Sure is doable with a little research.

Additionally an Ubuntu Forums user has filed a request for what you ask using Brainstorm. Other Ask Ubuntu questions mentioning editing or making quicklist menu/icon for application may be possible for an advanced user but can only find working examples for gnome environment and not unity like shown here and they do not use Firefox as a working example. The Ubuntu Forums question that is referred to can be found here and the Brainstorm request/idea can be found here So go get voting!

votemeup

Community
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geezanansa
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16

If you want a taskbar you could try tint2. works great for me.

Tint2 Website : https://gitlab.com/o9000/tint2

From Webupd8 : Tint2 is a lightweight panel/taskbar intentionally made for Openbox3, but should also work with other window managers such as Gnome.

enter image description here

You can install tint2 by issuing the command sudo apt-get install tint2 Then launch it through ALT+F2 and typing tint2

If you'd like to customize the position and the look and feel, there's an article on WebUpd8 with a GUI customizing tool here : http://www.webupd8.org/2009/09/how-to-install-and-configure-tint2.html

Nate
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Balraj McCoy
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  • Will I still be able to have Unity at the same time? I want to keep the "dash home": the kind of start menu where I can search for applications as well as search for menu commands using single press on alt key. – qwertzguy Apr 10 '13 at 13:19
  • Yeah it runs as a separate app in any Desktop Environment . You can try it out and see if it fancies your taste. – Balraj McCoy Apr 10 '13 at 14:33
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    Ok, so I tried it and it works well and is easy to configure using https://code.google.com/p/tintwizard/downloads/detail?name=tintwizard-0.3.4.tar.gz&can=2&q=. However I'm missing two important features: the ability to have shortcuts to launch apps and the middle click to duplicate an app. I can't seem to find a way to do it with tint. – qwertzguy Apr 10 '13 at 14:58
  • So I think I will settle with avant window navigator (AWN) which has the option to ungroup windows and is very powerful and customizable. – qwertzguy Apr 10 '13 at 14:59
  • AWN is a wise choice. Glad to see you found yourself an alternative :) – Balraj McCoy Apr 10 '13 at 15:10
  • This tool made me liking Ubuntu for the first time! thanks! – Humam Helfawi Mar 29 '18 at 13:03
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UPDATE 2021:

As much as I love the fact that people complain to me instead of Unity (when it was actually Unity the one with the issue), times have changed.

I am actually with the people that want to give the user the option instead of the platform removing it, but we need to be up to date with this:

  1. Unity is gone. It is now managed by Gnome.
  2. We would need to ask gnome to provide us with an option like this
  3. This was only relevant basically 4+ years ago. And it was the best way Gnome+Unity try to handled this scenario.
  4. I tried programming my own custom solution with no luck at that moment. After which Ubuntu moved to Gnome so my energy to create the custom solution was removed.

So, 5 to 9 years ago there was no way of disabling it (Please read the end of the answer for more). The idea behind this was for cases where you needed to open not 2 Firefox Windows, or 4, but 10 or 20. Now imagine having the Unity Launcher with the common icons it has plus 10 to 20 firefox icons there. You would see 10-20 firefox icons, all the same, and would first have to guess which one takes you to the webpage you wanted to go. Secondly, if you wanted to close them you would have to go, one by one and start closing them manually.

So we have 3 issues:

  • If a user wants to open many windows of the same program.
  • If a user wishes to switch easily between all opened windows of the same program.
  • If a user wants to close many windows of the same program.

With this 3 issues an idea came to mind. Group them together in a single icon in the Launcher that represents the application in use and offer in a one right click solution, all the options needed to cover the rest of the issues.

Between 12.04 and the soon to be release 13.04, there has been much work put out to not only solve this 3 issues, but to help the end user work faster and easily, with just a minor learning curve. The end result (For 13.04 for example) is an icon that can deliver many windows of the same application and offers the possibility to change between them in an almost one click solution. Of course, the option to disable it was never added (Even on 16.10).

Some of this images can show you an example:

NAUTILUS

In this example, I have Nautilus opened 4 times, one Nautilus is left opened on a folder called Docs. Another is opened pointing to HOME. Yet another is opened showing the Documents folder. One last Nautilus window is opened on a movie I have. By right clicking on the Nautilus icon I can easily switch between them by simply clicking on them. The window will maximize and gain focus, leaving me with a Window I can start working immediately.

enter image description here

CHROME

Here you can see the same example. Many Chrome Windows opened. Each with several tabs and each one showing the exact webpage where I left them:

enter image description here

FIREFOX

Lastly, your example, Firefox. Here you can see several Firefox Windows opened. And each Window is shown when I right click on the Firefox launcher icon:

enter image description here

Not only can I manage several windows of the same app quickly, but if the need arises, I can close them all with the "Quit" option in the launcher icon's context menu. Saving me time in case I had 20 Firefox Windows opened.

I also felt the pain when I could not access my multiple windows in an easier manner, but after using this method, I found it was easier, quicker to search in, since I did not have to go through many launcher icons to guess which one is the one I was looking for, neither did I have to scroll down the Unity launcher between 20 Firefox Windows, 30 Chrome ones and 40 Nautilus ones just to get to the one I needed. Overall, it saved me time when I needed to find the correct one and work on it.

As you can see, it focused itself to be more productive to the end user, with just a slight touch in the learning curve.

Now, if you actually wanted to have the option to ungroup them, it would involve, downloading the Unity source and any dependencies related to it. Modifying the code so you could actually ungroup them, by default or as an option, compile this and install it on the system, making your Unity be able to ungroup them as you wish. But in this case, I would ask, is it better than the solution provided by the Unity Development Team?.

This of course is left to each person to decide on how they like to use their system. In my humble and honest opinion, I feel the change made by the Unity team, solves several issues I had on 11.10 or even on 12.04 related to this, and the way it works on 13.04 is much better than I anticipated.

Currently there is no straight and specially easy way of disabling this option. Now, with all of this said, I do stand with the rest of the comments below in that, there SHOULD be an option to disable this. The user should always have an option. I have searched over a span of 2 years for an easy option to disable this or at least a script, with no luck. If however, you read this and find and option that is easy to apply without breaking the system, please share it as it will benefit everyone.

Luis Alvarado
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    a) This is not an answer to the question. b) In my humble and honest opinion the best option is always to let the user choose the behaviour they want! (So yeah, sure, have it the way it is as a default, but why not let users who are so inclined also ungroup the windows, perhaps even on an application by application basis?) – Tom Apr 07 '15 at 10:52
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    There are actually four issues. 4) The user wishing to switch between all open windows regardless of which application they belong to. Failing to recognize this results in this situation. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 21 '16 at 10:58
  • @ThorbjørnRavnAndersen Well actually that one would not apply to a windows grouping since it is based on a the same actual program, not multiple programs being grouped on the same dash icon. For that, I would actually use ALT+TAB which does the job right there and then. – Luis Alvarado Oct 21 '16 at 14:05
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    @LuisAlvarado The Alt-Tab implementation in Ubuntu does not do the job right there and then. It first navigates programs and then - if you hesitate - amongst windows of that program. This makes it unpredictable as time is involved in actual behavior and you need to look at the monitor while typing to ensure that you get what you want. This automatically makes the process slower! Were you involved with the design of this? – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 22 '16 at 10:02
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    the thing that annoys me most is that it always changes the sort order of the windows. It shows the last used on top. I am a developer and it drives me insane. I want things where I left them, not remember what was the 3rd most recent terminal or VS Code window I opened – Toolkit Aug 25 '18 at 09:59
  • I don't know if any of the last commenters know but this was an issue 4+ years ago. This is something that neither gnome nor unity did not want to address, so at the moment it was either adaptation or moving to KDE (or maybe even an extension that did that). For me, I rather have it like it is right now since it actually optimizes my flow of work and makes it cleaner. Hence why the answer will remain as is. If this is not what is needed, please feel free to either developer an extension for it, move to another desktop environment or join gnome to create the solution. – Luis Alvarado Aug 25 '18 at 18:37
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    Maybe I'm willing to have 10 or 20 Firefox icons. As I type this on my Mac, I have 14 Chrome icons in my dock right now. I prefer it that way. This should be a user preference, as it is on Mac. – Edward Falk Apr 05 '19 at 05:18
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    Several problems here: 1. There should basically never be a use case where you would need 10-20 Firefox windows. That's what tabs are for. 2. In any case, even such as having 10-20 windows in general, this is why there are usually options to collapse windows together in the taskbar if needed. – Andrew Sep 03 '19 at 19:57
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  • This isn't about learning curve, it's actually about usability. I should be able to Alt+Tab into any window within 1-2 seconds; I cannot effectively do this. This kills my workflow, because it interrupts my train of thought. 4. Managing window groups could still be done, both in the taskbar and in a Task Manager-like application.
    • – Andrew Sep 03 '19 at 19:57
  • This is terrible, redundant (even within itself) space taking not-an-answer - should be deleted or edited to just the last paragraph. – jave.web Oct 11 '19 at 11:07
  • I registered just for this. This is a good example of not thought-through and thinking it is smart but actually it is the opposite. I have only 2 bash terminals and i need 2 clicks to open the one i want, very annoying. Why not just give user an option, like windows does?? – Maluvel Jan 11 '21 at 09:18